How To Make Leather Dye Using Coffee ?

[Gleek]

Hi all,

I'm new to leatherwork and leatherwork.net and came here to get some info about old style dyes (and wasn't dissapointed!).

Based on the info found here, I tried some experiments on the almost magical coffee and steel wool combination. Looking for a darkish kind of brown, I brewed up two very strong medium dark roast coffees (125 grams of coffee to 1 liter of water), added some 000 steel wool to one of them, and had them simmering for some time until half the water had evaporated.

Here are the results for

1) veg tan leather and coffee, and

2) veg tan leather and coffee and steel wool.

In all pictures showing pairs, the one on the left is the plain coffee dye, the one on the right is the steel wool dye.

After 1 hour

After 12 hours

After 24 hours

Comparison between 1, 12 and 24 hours

Same sequence again, but now after an olive oile treatment...

I stopped (I hope) the dying process after 24 hours by rinsing it with a lot of cold water and now, after a week, the colours still hold.

Since this turned out to be a very interesting method I retried again with a darker roast of coffee but for some (to me unknown) reason, the colours came out quite more "lightly".

Colour penetration for the coffee-only variant is marginal; colour penetrations for the steel wool variant is total; see picture below...

Anyways, thanks to all you out there for pointing me in this direction and I hope you can use some of the info here.

Cheers,

Gleek

Edited June 1, 2014 by Gleek

[BDAZ]

I thinking about the steel wool and cofee solution, I am assuming strong coffee is acidic and the acid is probably reacting with the ferric steel wool and producing a form of ferric acetate. I just saw a show on making Turkish carpets and they use crushed walnut shells to produce a brown dye. They boil the walnut shells and then use the liquid for a permanent dye. Crushed walnut shells are available at your local Pet's Mart and used for lizard and bird bedding. The shells in Turkey were ground quite fine.

Cya!

Bob

[mircea]

Hi

Coming a bit late with my reply in this discussion.

I noticed that applying on the surface of leather(not soak) the brown walnut hulls dye results in a bleeding leather - i guess this is the right term for wiping the dye with water.

Not tried with coffee so far but I assume it ll be the same result.

What veedub3 stated in a post earlier: adding some steel woo l as a mordant; I want to know if anybody tried adding small quantities of steel wool thus preserving the color of the coffee dye and then rubbin it ONLY on the surface, will it bleed?

Or , is there a natural-diy mordant which u can use with a natural dye such as walnut hulls or coffee?

I will try it soon and post my results.

Mircea

[dbltlk44]

So, reading here inspired me to experiment a little bit with coffee as a dye. 

My mixture is composed of 3-4 cups of old French roast that I happened to save from several pots of morning brew. I also added to it by mixing up 1.5oz instant coffee in about 16oz hot water. To this brew I added a wad of #0000 steel wool, degreased via soaking in acetone and lighting it on fire. I also added probably 10-12 old nails and screws that I knew for sure would rust.

I let it sit for maybe a week to let the rust form, then I tried 2 quick methods of application...

1.dipping for a few minutes, and

2.Applying it with a foam brush, like a normal leather dye.

First,  dipped for maybe 10min total, as you can see by the "witness lines", I dipped it a few time for a total of 10 min. This is after rinsing,  no oiling.

[dbltlk44]

Second is application with a foam brush. I did maybe 2-3 wet coats, and was happily surprised that the color is quite close to the dipped color. Again, this is just rinsed but not oiled.

I'm pretty confident that if I dipped longer, or applied more coats, it would be darker deeper brown, but as-is its exactly the color I need for my project! Serendipity. 

Anyway, thanks to all here that shared their knowledge and experimentation, it's given me a nice dye to work with! And at probably less than $1 for a quart in materials..I'm very pleased.