Dyeing leather for WW upholstery use

[Geoff Siemering]

I recently was given a pretty good size piece of leather (1.5-2 square yards) that I would like to use for upholstering a rocking chair that I am in the process of building. The leather is fairly thick and in good shape, but the problem is that it is a not so pleasant shade of yellow on the finished side.

Does anyone know of a way to safely alter the color of already dyed leather (products and or techniques). I want to take the material from yellow to a medium brown.

Thanks,
Geoff

[Hal Flynt]

I used to do a little hobby leather work, belts mostly. I definitely recommend Fiebings Dye. I used to get it at a local Tandy, but now at another leather hobby shop. It’s an alcohol based dye and I never hesitated to dilute it to slowly build up the color that I wanted.

Now first I need to say that the leather I worked with was ‘Vegetable tanned” as opposed to “Chrome Tanned”. Chrome tanning has a bluish tint on the nap side, while veggy tanned is natural color. With vegetable tan, you can wet shape the leather and tool it so when it dries, it retains the shape and tooling. You can use a “dobber”, but an air brush or touch up gun will get you a more even coverage. Or you can cover fairly quickly so as to avoid lap marks with a piece of that synthetic wool stuff that looks like fleece. Use gloves as your hands are a lot like leather. I suppose any good “rubber” like French polishing would work too. Use a color chart like you were changing the color of a piece of wood.

I have dyed chrome tanned shoes etc, with no real problem IF the leather isn’t glazed with some protector that prevents the dye from absorbing. If it is, then you A) remove the glaze and recolor or B) get some of the spray leather/vinyl dye that you can find at an auto body supply place. The spray is fairly opaque and covers well. I use this to freshen up worn spots on my leather car upholstery.

Now if what you want to do is tone the current yellow down with some brown glaze, then Fiebings also makes a glaze that they call “Antique” and it comes in browns, blacks etc. It has some dye and wax like stuff that you rub on and off much like pigment stain and you can work it pretty much any way you want to. If you get it too thick, then rubbing alcohol will remove most of it. This is the easiest way to tone leather and get the look you want regardless of the type of tanning, but it may rub off. SO once you have the color right, you will want to top coat it. (Sounds a lot like wood finishing doesn’t it? It is) A good leather store can help you here as it depends on the use as to what you need to do. I’ve used shellac, lacquer, and a host of leather sealers etc. from acrylic to waxes.

If it’s for seating, then a more permanent type of spray may be the best and safest for color fastness. My leather chair is great, but color will come off when it gets wet DAMHIKT.

As always try whatever you do on a test piece and good luck!