spraying belts

[utah leather]

thinking of trying spraying my veg tan belts instead of dyeing them by hand to eliminate streaks and everything else that happens. I would like some input from those of you who do this and what kind of sprayer you use, and where do you have your spray booth set up 

[Handstitched]

G'Day, I'm hardly an expert on spraying leather  as its not very often I do it, but I mostly spray large items like large  hand bags, saddle bags etc.  to ensure evenness  without streaks etc. , as you said. But I haven't sprayed  belts, except  some air brushing.     I have a general purpose  $100 air compressor and use a  2 touch up spray guns ( 1 for dyes , 1 for sealer)  and an air brush  like the ones in the pic. The dyes I use are mostly water based , but I do sometimes add a little spirit  to the spray pot to  aid drying. 

Putting a sealer through the  touch up gun  can be challenging as it can occasionally  clog up, I do thin the sealer a bit,  but I run some spirit through it immediately after use to keep it clean. As for a spray both, thats something I don't have, no space.  I mostly spray outside my workshop, or spray right next to the roller door ,wide open,  if I need to  be under cover. If I was to spray belts on a regular basis, I think I would have too much down time having to set up the compressor, the gun, keeping the gun/s clean and/or  clean  it to change colour .But I guess it also depends on the volume of belts you intend dying .  Others on here may have a much better set up than I do.  

I use large pieces of sheep skin off cuts, trimmed,  when dying belts etc.  much quicker.

*The  small bag was just a practice piece to try my hand at air brushing for the first time.  

Hope this sort of helps.

HS  

[utah leather]

Thank You for the advice, still looking for a video to help me, but so far no luck

[Handstitched]

G'Day,

No worries mate  

I have had a look for spraying leather   videos,  and apart from a few air brushing leather vids,  I've had no luck either, except for this one, which you may have already seen,and ...well, its not very informative at all :

 

Not much help at all. At least  he's got a spray booth, which is more than I've got  

  HS 

[Northmount]

An airbrush should be adequate.  It's not like you are trying to paint a wall with a airbrush that only covers 2" diameter circle.  It is also easy to overlap without leaving defined edges on the overlap.

There are lots of posts about using airbrushes, size, model, etc. here.

Do a goggle search limited to this site  "site:leatherworker.net airbrush"  the string site:leatherworker.net limits google to searching this site.  You can click on the link and save yourself time typing it in.  You can add other terms into the search string to limit or better define the results you are looking for.

Tom

[utah leather]

On 3/3/2018 at 4:03 AM, Handstitched said:

G'Day,

No worries mate  

I have had a look for spraying leather   videos,  and apart from a few air brushing leather vids,  I've had no luck either, except for this one, which you may have already seen,and ...well, its not very informative at all :

 

Not much help at all. At least  he's got a spray booth, which is more than I've got  

  HS 

yeah I saw that one, like you say, not very informative, you would think it would be easy to find a video on this stuff, thanks for the help, I guess I will just have to keep looking.