deer hyde dying dye colorfast Colorfast Deer Hide

[JackWack]

Hello my friends, we've made some deer skin gloves, but we're having a difficult time colorfasting the leather.  We've always had a hard time colorfasting our hand dyed projects, so lately we've begun working with predyed and finished leathers.  But we can't hide from this monster anymore.  So we've turned to you?  Is there a general guide or source of information on color fasting, or could you share what you know, and more specifically, do you know how to lock down the dye in this deer skin?  Our customer loves the gloves, but his his hands were rather colorful after a night's use, I think he has sweaty hands.

 

As background, this is soft supple deer tan hide, used a water based eco flo dye, willing to try anything to color fast them.  We have buffed, and I mean buffed (we do everything by hand, sans electricity, but in this case, we BUFFED these gloves, they still give off their color).  Normally we have formed a very uneasy relationship with Resolene.  Truth be told, we hate the stuff, why go the trouble of working and making things out of leather if they're just going to look like plastic when you're done?

 

We didn't use the Resolene because I can imagine that cracked flakey surface, after the supple gloves have been put on and taken off even once.  But also, we'd like a better colorfasting method for regular vegtan work.  All help would be greatly appreciated.

[johnv474]

Have you tried diluting your Resolene?  50:50 with water and then applying two thin coats is usually enough to prevent it from looking plasticky at all.  I use it this way on all of my projects.