Stain or dye? Oil or water? Need a little help here! :)

G

GrizzlyBear

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So I'm looking over Leather Unlimited's website at the dyes and what not and I see:

Stain, Dye, Oil dye, institutional dye...lol how is a newbie to know what to get?

I'm getting ready to order me some leather and get started with a few sheaths. Problem is, I have one sheath for an order that needs to be black, and I have sheaths that need to be brown. So, instead of going the easy way and ordering a W&C predyed piece, I have go to unfinished and dye my first couple of sheaths.

But what dye to get? Or stain? What's the difference?

Thanks for all the help to a newbie leather worker :)
 
Dye!! I use Feibing's Professional Oil Dye by choice, but their USMC Black spirit dye is good too. I cannot recommend any of the "eco" crap out there (water dyes). Stick with the good dyes and just go hug a tree for your part of saving the planet.

All of the above applies to Brown dyes also.

Paul
 
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GrizzlyBear said:
Thank you sir! What is the difference between a stain and a dye?
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You know, I'm not even sure myself any more. I think the stain just imparts kind of a "tone" change and the dye actually changes the color. You want DYE!

Paul
 
It is confusing eh?

Everything I have that says "stain" on the bottle has been a toner of sorts like Paul states. It fills in the cuts and makes them darker while leaving the high spots lighter. There's a whole technique to these stains that can be a whole chapter in itself. There's even several kinds of stains out there: Hi Lighter, antique, color stain, etc.

Those Institutional dyes and the new water based dyes are a mess. iirc, the new stuff seems to be just re packaged Institutional dye. Jails and schools want something non toxic, and they got this. :p
 
Technically the difference between stain and dye should be that stain contains pigment, and dye contains dye. Pigment is finely powdered stuff like rocks, metal oxides, clays...dye is molecules with color, hydrocarbons mostly. Dye molecules are much smaller than a pigment particle, so they penetrate into the structure of the leather better. As to what manufacturers are putting into a bottle and labeling "dye" or "stain", that's another matter...
 
Mahoney said:
Technically the difference between stain and dye should be that stain contains pigment, and dye contains dye. Pigment is finely powdered stuff like rocks, metal oxides, clays...dye is molecules with color, hydrocarbons mostly. Dye molecules are much smaller than a pigment particle, so they penetrate into the structure of the leather better. As to what manufacturers are putting into a bottle and labeling "dye" or "stain", that's another matter...
Click to expand...

While that's true for wood stains and dyes, but it's just about the opposite for leather dyes/stains at least in the way in which they work - most solvent based leather dyes are powdered pigment in suspension that's why you need to buff the surface well after dying in order to remove the pigment residue left on the surface (like Paul I've never used the water based dyes such as Tandy/LF's Eco line of dyes).
On the other hand coffee and walnut hulls (albeit often called dyes) stain the leather without leaving any residue at least if filtered properly. And then there's vinegar black which is a chemical reagent since the black color is created via a reaction between the iron in suspension and the tannins in the leather......

To add to the confusion when it comes to leather dyes/stains. The following quote is from the Fiebing's site:
Leather Stain
Non-flammable, penetrating dye that provides long lasting, lustrous color.........
 
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