color samples

[CitizenKate]

Hi gang,

Just thought I'd share some photos of some color samples I made using 3 different colors of Eco Flo leather dyes from Tandy. The three colors I used are "cranberry", "sunshine yellow", and "evening blue".

There has been quite a bit of discussion on the board in regards to colorfastness of various dyes and paints used to color leather, and I really wanted to know how the new water-based dyes stacked up to the others in terms of how much or little they fade with exposure to light. Nobody seemed to have an an answer, so I made up some samples, photographed them, then placed them on the sill of a south-facing window for two weeks. In that amount of time, they have been exposed to several hours of bright, intense, direct sunlight almost every day. I'm planning to leave them there for at least a few months, but I decided to take another photo and let you all see how they're doing so far...

Kate

[Regis]

Interesting test that needs to be made. Surely the makers have done testing but, as yet, are not willing to release findings.

Thank you for keeping ups up to date.

Regis

[wolvenstien]

the beige and purple in the second pic look darker than the first pic, and the red in the second look a bit lighter than the first pic....

[CitizenKate]

The yellow and blue (it does kinda look purple in the photo, doesn't it?), do seem a little darker. It looks to me as thought the pigment itself does not seem to have faded much, but the leather has darkened slightly from the prolonged exposure to sunlight, just as it normally does.

The red ("cranberry") does seem to have faded slightly.

Kate

[CitizenKate]

Here's another installment... The swatches have now been sitting in the window for 4 weeks. (The photos are displayed by date in reverse order; i.e., the latest is on the left.) You can see signs of the leather bleaching, but the colors are holding up fairly well. I wish I had thought to make up some samples with spirit dyes to test side-by-side with these. I really think they are holding up better than the spirit dyes would.

Kate

Edited August 5, 2007 by CitizenKate

[Tangent Creations]

These are water based? what about sweat....and bleeding of the pigment? We use the Fiebing's spirit dyes and have had some problems lately with color fastness and in one instance took over one bottle to make two belts red...

BTW good thinking Kate, I've been wondering about the new dyes!

[abn]

Kate, thanks for the update.

T.C., these are indeed water-based, so you'll need to put two or three light coats of Satin Shene over top of the dyed surface to reduce the possibility of bleeding.

[CitizenKate]

The water-based dyes are not showing any more propensity for bleeding or fading than the spirit dyes. Possibly less.

Any dye should be sealed with a final coat of some kind, to reduce bleeding and fading... acrylic, wax, lacquer, etc. My preference these days is wax (I use Bee-Natural the majority of the time, which is a wax-based finish), or lacquer if I need the best waterproofing possible. Now that Eco-Flo has been introduced, Tandy is now telling us to "stay away" from Neat-Lac and other lacquer top/final coats. In my opinion, if they want us to "stay away" from lacquer, they'd better come up with something that does a better job of protecting from moisture than an acrylic finish.

JMO (just my opinion)

Kate