First, I mixed my own dye. The tan dye I had was too light, and the brown I had was too dark. I cut the dark brown dye with alcohol (about 1/3 dye to 2/3 alcohol) and tested some scrap pieces, continuing to add alcohol until it was coming out the way I wanted. Then i used this mix to dye all the tooled areas.
After that dried, I covered all the tooled areas with hi-liter, and after letting it sit for 30 seconds or so, wiped it off. This let all the impressions get a little dark in the deepest parts, lending debth and a bit of an aged look.
Next, after letting that all dry overnight, I dyed all the remaining leather black, being careful not to get it onto the tooled areas. After getting close, I used a thin brush to get up next to the tooling lines.
Lastly, I used the thin paint brush to put dye into all the textured background areas of the tooling.
I'm at about 15 hours in at this point, and soon I will be able to start the actual work of constructing this rig.
3 comments:
Wow! That looks great. Plan to have a vendors booth set up at Louisiana State. You can use my 10X10 shade awning. I beet you'll have lots of visitors at your booth.
Very nice work!
Wicked good looking!
J.D. Brown
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