Yamel Report post Posted January 19, 2019 Hi all, I'm pretty new to leathercraft, and have mostly been working with pre-dyed leather. Now that I want to get more into carving and making LARP / medieval-style armour, I got myself some 2mm and 4mm veg tan. However, I find it hard to tell, when looking around online, whether pieces are dyed by hand, painted, or the leather came pre-dyed. For example the piece attached (found on pinterest). Is the dark green the original colour of the leather? Or was it just a veg tan that was dyed green, yellow and black? And how would I go about doing that? Also, for future reference, how do I go about figuring out myself how a piece of dyed? I really appreciate any help on this! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nrk Report post Posted January 19, 2019 you'd better start from basics as you are asking questions already answered many times. get some leathercraft books - you will find them useful and those questions will be gone. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MilitaryCollector Report post Posted January 19, 2019 Hi. If you want to do that, the white and green was acrylic paint then stain was applied over it. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HeatherAthebyne Report post Posted January 19, 2019 Most of the tooling leather you see around for sale is undyed and unfinished, but there is certainly pre-dyed tooling leather out there. Springfield Leather has brown and black Hermann Oak, and there are other sources for other colors which escape me at the moment. That said, the piece you posted is probably tooled and hand dyed, then painted with acrylics, then given another coat of an antiquing stain. Learning to dye by hand is fun as long as you're open to getting a nice and completely unexpected result for your first attempts. For LARP armor, I'd definitely try it! When you try to dye a piece, then add a couple more coats to try to even it out, then add a darker layer because you're so frustrated by the unevenness, then finally embrace the variation and sponge on a few more blobs just to pretend you meant to do that, you will get a lovely texture and depth of shade which will kick your outfit up several notches. Not that, ah, I know anything about failing to apply an even dye job. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
