My guide to the best vinegaroon you've ever made.

[Atalanta]

Interesting. I get high strength vinegar at HMart (29-31% as opposed to 5%) and use it as an herbicide. Would this work or should it be 5%? And it seems the general consensus is to just rinse it off rather than give it a baking soda bath. 

[fairfarren]

On 3/1/2021 at 4:36 PM, Matt S said:

I'll see if I can dig out my notes but that was a few moves ago so I'm not confident I'll be able to find them. I feel some experiments coming on...

Any luck on searching for those notes? Baby leatherworker here very interested in your findings

[RW6mm]

On 3/1/2021 at 6:17 AM, Matt S said:

If the OP is still around, I'd be curious about his take as a chemist on using other iron sources for striking leather black rather than everyone tediously reacting their own ferric acetate. With the presence of water almost any source of iron will work. Will Ghormley uses a drum of water with rusty strap iron in it. I'm sure that most of us have noticed that blood does the same job too, as do iron filings (e.g. from a splitting machine). Iron diet supplement pills work if ground up and dissolved in water. I tend to use iron sulphate crystals from the garden centre. All you're doing is providing a way for the iron to react with the tannic acid in the leather leftover from the tanning process to form FEO3 (an insoluble blue-black lake). I have scepticisms on the importance or specialness of vinegaroon in achieving this effect, though I admit that the acid left after the reaction may make a difference in the longevity of the leather -- but that in turn presupposes that the leather isn't washed in plain water after striking (which I presume we're all doing after using any striker including vinegaroon, right? ).

Interesting read.... fun learning about Roon from all of you

[RW6mm]

First pic: collection of rust items

second: after 2weeks in 50/50 vinegar-water

 

pic 3: the top and black test piece after a 4 second dip into the try as seen in pic 2

 

pic 3: the bottom test strip was dipped 4 seconds in an ice cream bucket that the rusty items were rinsed off in.

 

i am using coffee filters to strain the tray of pic 2.

 

i am putting the cruddy coffee filters into the ice cream bucket.

To Neutralize:: i will wait as i have in previous posts to apply baking soda just prior to using the Vinegaroon.

time will tell.  I wonder how well the filtered batch will work?

How much water can be added... a pint,? a quart?

Should i have added a quart and Not Strained at all?

 

i m a retired Taxidermist, having hand tanned hundreds of deer capes, i like the hands on leather crafting.

 

ps:  also own a straight stitch walking foot Mini Thompson with Monster Wheel set up.  It sews liner to 5-7 oz ok when the tension is ‘right’.

[Klara]

I forgot about my vinegaroon for a bit over a year and remembered it only last week (the bottle was closed - no idea whether the steel wool is still in there or whether I had taken it out) when I needed watery black dye and found I only had edge paint. The vinegaroon worked beautifully! 

[Doc Reaper]

And what does “striking” mean???? Y’all have to explain to us as though we are a 2 year old!

[Doc Reaper]

On 9/4/2021 at 2:46 PM, chuck123wapati said:

it will be ready on the first full moon of the second month of the third year when the blue wooly tater bug flies south. 

i apply it with a cold beer! but some good home made Irish whiskey will work also.

I tried applying it with tequila, the mixture made the tequila taste funny

[Matt S]

12 hours ago, Doc Reaper said:

And what does “striking” mean???? Y’all have to explain to us as though we are a 2 year old!

It's an industry term for things like vinegaroon, where colour is introduced by a chemical reaction rather than a pigment or dye. The most common is the grey-black-blue one you get from iron. There are others but they aren't as spectacular and use less common ingredients.

Edited February 20, 2023 by Matt S

[Annemiek222]

I made de vinegaroon earlier following a ‘recipe’ that required the steel wool to stay in de the vinegar for quite some time. The solution turned into a brownish slurrie. I put it through a sieve and used it and all items turned black. I bathed the items in some water with backing soda and it all worked nicely. I had some vinagaroon left and stored it. Tried to use it on some new leather items, but it did not do anything anymore. So made some more. Steel wool and vinegar, left it 10-20 hours, tested a drop in leather it turned black, yeay. Prepared some straps to be coloured and dunked them in the solution. It turned grayish, took the straps out and waited. They did turn blackish so okay, happy. Put them in a water bath with some backing soda… stayed blackish, went to bed and the next morning find the straps dried and lost most of the colour…. Is this what the backing soda bath does? Or.. is the vinegaroon not strong enough yet? I really don’t know what to think of it.

On the right a piece of scrap leather. I used that one to test the vinegaroon (you can see black dots on it). I also dunked it halfway (the part with the black dots was submerged in the vinegaroon) and did not rinse it with the backing soda bath.

[Gosut]

It's possible that it wasn't strong enough. Another possibility is the tannins in the leather. On New Year's Day, I used vinegaroon I had made over several days back in the summer, but prior to use I dunked the leather in black tea and let it stay a few minutes to add tannins. Then I dunked it in vinegaroon, then, when it was nice and black (less than half an hour), removed, gave it a baking soda bath, then rinsed and put it back in the tea for a short soak, then rinsed again. Based on comments on the forum, the next time I use vinegaroon, I think I'll not bother with the baking soda. The idea of the baking soda is to remove free acetic acid in the vinegaroon that's left in the leather, but it will also remove any tannins left.

What's going on is that the iron and the vinegar form ferrous acetate, which reacts with tannic acid to produce black. That's why I gave it a short soak in tea before and after. There has to be enough ferrous acetate to react with the tannins, and enough tannins for the ferrous acetate to react with. My guess is that 20 hours didn't produce enough ferrous acetate, but that's just a guess.