Making Suede on the Reverse side & Dye

[aLayman]

Hi, I just joined this forum and hope to be a regular member.  I'm self taught leatherworker (youtube videos, etc) for the past 5 years.  I mainly make pocket watch cases.

I'm trying to sharpen my skills and instead of having the inside of the case smoothed, I'd like to make it suede.  So I've been searching for making the Reverse Side (Fleshside) of the leather into a dyed suede type feel, while my Grain Side is tooled on the outside.  But everything I've tried has caused the dye to fade if I dye it before I roughing it up, or if I dye it after the fibers that I've roughed up to stick together.

I've tried bonding suede to the inside of my cases, but I just haven't had any luck with the small size and I'd rather not add any more hand stitching that I already do to it.  

Does anyone have any good insight on how I could accomplish this?

[koreric75]

So suede and the flesh side of tooling leather are pretty different, as is the dying techniques, I used some finished garment leather rough/flesh side out for a dopp kit, I airbrushed the dye and put a good coat of suede/nubuck leather protector on it, but could not get a very true color as the fibers when brushed would show their beige color under... But it was still soft... For the pocket watch cases I would imagine you want it soft to protect the watch, or slicked down for same reason, but honestly I think the lining is the best way to get the feel, look and protection you're looking for.  It's possible you could get away with bonding with contact cement, very thin even coat on both surfaces, let dry then bond... That should hold for as long as the watch lasts, for the edges you can trim just shy of the tooling leather or try something like folding the edges over or a nice trim piece... All involve more stitching though... Sorry not much help... Another thought would be to but pre dyed tooling leather, I've found some that tool well and the rough side is very velvety feeling... You could still add touch up color or highlights possibly to the tooling if desired... May require just deglazing the outside a bit.

Edited September 6, 2018 by koreric75