Veg tan leather discolors/stains reddish when wet

[VYO]

Yes, I did. He's seen the mahogany, tan, and buckskin versions of this holster and really wants the buckskin. If I don't get it right in the three tests I'm doing today I'll probably not do the buckskin color until I use up this hide and get another one. I haven't tried mahogany or tan with this hide yet so not sure if they will behave the same way. At least the mahogany shouldn't show the leaching as much if it's the leather.

[VYO]

A modicum of success on the first sheath assembled today. The top pocket section has not been sealed yet. I need to let the inside dry a little before I do that but at least I don't have the reddish stain issue. For this one, I did it with the same process as the one that stained. I changed how I completed a couple of those processes. 

1) I used a white t-shirt to dye the pieces instead of the daubers.

2) I was very careful not to get any water on anything but the edge when I did the initial burnishing. Even at that I still got some bleeding of red color. A minor amount. ( There was no dye on the edges when I did that. 

3) After seeing the stains in #1 above I applied some 100% neatsfoot oil and waited for it to dry. That seems to have removed the visual of the bleed over.

4) After getting it all stitched when I wet the inside, I didn't soak it. I got it just wet enough that I could form the pocket around the multitool.

5) I touched up the edge burnishing where necessary.

Now I'm just waiting for it to dry so I can seal it. Hopefully that will all go well.

In this process I eliminated the issue of the daubers. I still got bleed over using the t-shirt to dye with.

The process described above did not work that well for the initial sheath I originally posted about. In the next post I'll show a photo of how that one turned out.

[VYO]

Below is the sheath from the original post. Because it was already toast I tried an experiment with it. While it's not what was intended I think it still turned out ok in two-tone.

I applied 100% neatsfoot oil on the top piece and then sealed it. The stain is still visible a little bit but looks much better than it did. It's still a reddish brown. I can probably sell this one now instead of tossing it.

[Aven]

I like your solution.  Not what the client wanted, but someone is going to want this.

[VYO]

Thank you @Aven .

[spurdude101]

just curious, how did you redye the pocket and still keep the stitching bright white?

[VYO]

22 minutes ago, spurdude101 said:

just curious, how did you redye the pocket and still keep the stitching bright white?

Funny thing happened. When I re-dyed the pocket the stitching of course turned a yellow color due to the buckskin dye. What is funny is that when I applied the sealer (RTC) after the dye dried it removed 'most' of the yellow from the stitching. My guess is that because the Tiger thread has a heavy wax coating most of the dye didn't penetrate the stitching when I re-dyed.

Edited January 5, 2019 by VYO

[nrk]

On 1/1/2019 at 9:46 PM, VYO said:

From what I remember Hermann Oak is a little darker in color than Sepici. One reason I like Sepici is because I get a better truer color when dyeing in colors other than the brown shades - blue, pink, purple, etc. They're about the same cost.

True. HO is a bit darker.
Now this is interesting: "they're about the same cost" - there is no tannery in Turkey that can match a quality of HO/WC. I didn't find any, including Sepici. They feel the hype of veg tan leather and raised their prices closer to HO and WC,  despite the quality is not the same. Not at all.

If you like lighter veg tan, you can get directly from Wickett &craig.
 

On 1/5/2019 at 8:00 PM, VYO said:

 I applied the sealer (RTC) after the dye dried it removed 'most' of the yellow from the stitching. My guess is that because the Tiger thread has a heavy wax coating most of the dye didn't penetrate the stitching when I re-dyed.

All polyester threads I used so far will loose their initial colors over the time, no matter what is the wax amount inside.