How To Get A Darker Brown From Blk Walnut Husk Brew?

[Walstr]

Greetings my new friends;

I made 4 gal. Black Walnut dye/stain, cooking husks 4 hours, then cooling overnight, filtered 5 times & bottled. It's not as dark a brown as I would like. Soaking samples for 1 hour or overnight, produced same color tone.

This photo shows my leatherwork 'practice' session results. The hatchet sheaths are from same piece of veg tanned hide, the multi-tool sheath from various small scraps.

Shall I put it all back in the pot over low flame to evaporate the water? Will this necessarily produce a darker brown color?

Thanks for any comments/critiques.

Wally

[datdraku]

i made some walnut dye myself,left the leather in overnight and i darkened it by rubbing some olive oil on it. probably neatsfoot oil will darken it more.

only did it once but it worked for me

[Walstr]

That's why I included those pics, oiling just gave me a darker tan color. Has anyone used heat to evaporate water from the walnut stain to concentrate it? Does that work?

[Drgrandma]

Hello, I'm looking thru this site trying to find out how to dye veg-tanned leather with homemade walnut dye. I started out dyeing wool and plant fiber cloth. Let the husks just ferment outside in 5 gal bucket, that makes color darker. You can also simmer the dilute dye to concentrate it, but it can tak days! A crockpot is handy because then you don't have to watch the temp as much. Just yesterday I was making dye bath up and added 1/2 cup iron liquor to 3.5 gallon fermented walnut juice...gave me a lovely DARK shade of brown! Much nicer than walnut alone. How did you apply walnut dye? Wet leather first or no?  

   Hope this helps, and I hope you can help me too! 

[stelmackr]

....or just pour some Fiebings dark brown spirit dye into the mixture.  ;-)