Dyeing leather

[spolij]

I dyed the leather from very faded gold to black. The job was very easy and came out great.
I bought the kit from Furniture Clinic. If your going to do a whole car get the extra large kit. The kit comes with an air gun and compressor. Great deal.

[76eldo]

Good to know.
Can you post some more details and maybe some photos?

Thanks
Brian

[spolij]

I will post pics, if i can figure out how to do it!

[Jeff Wilk]

I used the line of SEM products from TCPGLOBAL.COM 8 years ago on the interior of our ‘59 and it still looks like new. Cleaning and prep are absolute key steps before you rush to dye if you want it to work.

Jeff W.

[76eldo]

SEM products are great but I think dyeing leather is a different process and the chemicals go deeper into the material instead of sitting on top of the surface.

Brian

[Bill Young]

Just a note on some things I have learned over the years regarding leather. There is surface dyed leather and vat dyed leather. Surface dyed means when you turn the hide over you see the original color of the hide. Vat dyed leather when turned over you see the obverse side is the same color as the surface. Cadillac's back in the day used vat dyed leather exclusively. SMS interiors offers vat dyed leather in the correct textures for our cars as well as correct vinyl and upholstery selections. I redid the entire interior of a white on white , red leather 1968 DeVille convertible in 2000 with material from them and it was spot on perfect.

[Jeff Wilk]

Completely agree Brian. The challenge is that most of these products talk about “cleaning for proper adherence of the color”. Even the product from Furniture Clinic. I think Bill’s last post here is great and critical to know about surface VS vat dying as it would make sense that unless you somehow remove all of the old leathers top coat it would seem that all of these products mostly actually sit on top of the leather with some degree of soaking in to adhere. Very interesting. I dont have a preference either way and the Furniture Clinic products look great overall too. Its great to have options in this hobby for sure!!!

Jeff W.

[76eldo]

I've seen stuff online where they use a fairly fine grit sandpaper to scuff the top coat of the leather after cleaning. This opens the pores in the leather and allows the dye to penetrate.

This is surface dyeing. As good as you are going to get on a car already built.

[gkhashem]

Not sure what you are saying concerning dyed leather vs surface dyed. All hides have a grain side and a flesh side. The grain side is the side you usually see on the seat where you sit. The flesh side is that in the inside of the animal. Looks like suede. Suede leather is actually leather shaved off the flesh side of a hide.

Hides are made in varying thicknesses. Leather for a golf glove will be thin, while leather for a work boot will be thicker. Getting it thinner results in suede leather, they do not throw away the back shaved off a hide.

One of the earliest steps in the tanning process after removing the hair and flesh is the color wheel. The hides are dyed usually in anticipation of the final color the grain will be. After the dye the hide is color of the dye. Front and back.

After the hide is dyed later in the process the desired color is first swabbed onto the hides. Like a painting of a primer coat then after they dry the final top coats will be sprayed on. You do not get the glossy surfaces by just dyeing.

Yes the fronts can be different from the back. This usually comes from spraying a new top coat on a hide. Usually when this happens it was for a reject hide that was changed color to just sell it. Usually black seemed to be a good hide to do this to.

How do I know.

I worked in a tannery for 6 summers in High school and college.  From 1976 to 1981.

The tannery used to take junk hides and spray them black for sale to Communist China. We sold then junk but that's what they wanted to make cheap stuff I guess. So they used red, yellow, white, whatever and made the topcoats black. Usually the grain side would have defects or would not pass for purses or good shoes so they repurposed them.

They would dye the whole hide close to the final finish since color matching was very important. Like painting a car. So they were trying to get the top coat correct. Using various dyed hide to make a batch of maroon leather would be difficult if they were using hides of different colors.