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Martin Obrien writes:
Groop,
With your help, Mike Mascelli in particular, I was finally able
to complete the leather work on a pair of Roycroft chairs.
What I did was to replace the severly damaged leather seats
with new leather made to match the old leather.
Pictures before and after will hopefully illustrate this.
The customer was very happy.
I was able to save all of the tacks and place them back
into the exact same holes as with the previous leather.
I experimented with many coloring materials.
The schedule I setteld on was as follows:
On bare or light tan leather I applied (with an old wool sock) a solution
of Jeff's Transtint Dark Mission Brown in Russ's 200 proof alcohol.
I doubled Jeff's recommended concentration.
Russ's alcohol seemed to give the penetration
and evaporation rate I was looking for.
Once this was dry, I applied a heavy coat of Tandy's Black Antique
stain. This product is very similar to a water based gel stain/glaze.
It dries very quickly.
Once this was dry, I sprayed on a coat of Feibings Bag-Kote.
I wish I knew what was in this stuff, but it's water based,
satin sheened and is very flexible.
Bag-Kote is not very water resistant, so I padded an
extremely thin (1 lb. cut) coat of blonde shellac on top.
Mike suggested that, in the future, I or anyone else try
Mohawk's L/V lacquers which are water based and
specifically for leather and vinyl.
They come in various sheens also.
I tried and was pleases with Fiebings leather dyes.
The reason that I did not use them was that
they colored too well and too uniform.
They are excellent dyes, but I wanted something
that colored leather less than perfect.
Jeff's dyes, being formulated for wood, did just that.
I'm not saying that Jeff's dyes are imperfect, it's just that the way
I was using them was giving me the result I wanted. I think the
Fiebings dyes have a slightly different solvent blend and possibly
a higher dye concentration which allows for specific leather use.
I will continue to experiment as leather jobs come up.
I enjoyed this leather work so much that I'm really hoping
for more work of this kind.
I could not have done this without the endless help of Mike Mascelli.
We had a weeks or maybe months long 'behind-the-scenes'
e-mail thing going so that I could learn about leather.
I know I drove him nuts, but I hope he knows he can
return the favor whenever needed.
I have been profitting from Groop since 1999 (when Daniel Shafner
found me floundering in cyberspace) and have been truly thankful
for Groop ever since.
MartinO
NC
