Red color

Rick Lowe

Rick Lowe

Joined
Jan 6, 2005
Messages
1,331
Having a problem getting a real true bright red on natural vegtan using dye. Have used specific acrylic paint on small areas in the past, but customer wants entire sheath a ruby red. Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance
 
Red dye can be a frustrating experience, it either goes on really light or really dark. Technique is critical, run that dauber in circles, swirling the dye in overlapping loops. Do this quickly and accurately. You may have to run two lengths to get it even. This technique I learned from a book written by Stohlman.

If that doesn't work you might have to do the water flood. This is where you wet the leather surface till its nice and evenly done then run the dye over the surface in those swirls like before. This lets the dye penetrate slower and more evenly. Only use this technique with regular dye, it will NOT work with the Fiebings Pro Dye and I have not tried it with that Eco Flo dye from Tandy so can neither confirm or deny its usefulness.
 
I regularly use the flood technique with Fiebings regular dyes with good results, but the red either looks like cranberries or worse. Can't seem to get a bright finish tone. May not gonna happen. Thanks!
 
Rick, if tooling is not required you might try a complete overlay using red Red Kid Skin. The colors in Kid Skin are generally very bright and true. Think about all the boot tops you've seen.

Paul
 
Paul, thought about that using some of the available garment leathers and using veg-tan on the inside. Additional problem is this is is going to have a ray inlay on one side. Still doable, but not sure how that much "sandwich" would work out. Customer wants the butterfly style which is tougher to have everything fit up and look right when folded/sewn.
 
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