Hi. Jim Linnell with Tandy Leather.
I'm going to be showing you how to make a wallet.
And I'll be going through each of the steps
with each of the tools in enough detail
so that you'll know
how to get the best results out of your leatherwork.
Now that all of our leather stamping is finished,
we've let this leather completely dry out,
and that's one of the rules that is good to follow
when you're putting your stains on your leather.
They all work best if you'll let your leather completely dry out,
so we've let this dry out overnight
so that there's no moisture left in it.
It's ready to dye the background.
We're going to do a several-step process to this.
It's often called inlay dyeing;
it's what I'm going to do.
We're going to color the background
with a dark-colored stain,
which will really cause this design to stand out.
The product that I'm going to use is called waterstain
and I'm just going to use a medium-brown color here.
It'll give us a lot of contrast.
It'll really bring out the natural tones in the leather.
I find this to be a really good type of stain to use
for this sort of dye work.
I'm going to put some of this in my dish here
so that I have easy access to it.
So we'll put a little bit of it in there.
And then using just a medium-sized brush,
I don't know what number that is,
but something that you could bring to a fairly good point.
We'll just use a brush and lay that dye in there.
When we're putting the dye on the brush,
I'll show you here.
I do put quite a bit of dye in the brush initially
because I want the dye to feed down the brush as we're working here
so that it doesn't just stay on the very end of it,
so I'll put a good bit of dye in it,
and then we'll start working on the leather.
A couple of important things about using these types of dyes.
These are translucent.
That is, they allow a little bit of the color of the leather
to come through.
This here is pretty dark, so there's not a lot of that,
but when you use this type of a dye,
if you were to put this color on a piece of white paper,
it would give you a little different tone
than it's going to on this natural colored veg tanned leather.
So just be aware of that when you're using this dye.
One of the things on this dry leather,
this product's called waterstain
and it is a water-based product,
and it does penetrate into the leather really well,
especially this dry leather, but one of the things
when you're dyeing the background on something like this.
You'll notice that I didn't start right up close to the edge.
I start out in the larger middle of it,
and then as I get a little less dye coming off of my brush,
I'll work up closer to those edges.
Sometimes, although this water stain doesn't do it quite as bad
as some of the solvent-based dyes,
but sometimes your dye will hit the leather,
and it'll soak in, and it'll spread a little bit.
Like I said, the waterstain doesn't do that quite so much
as some of the other solid-based dyes,
but it works really well,
and you just have to be very careful with this.
You have to take your time and be very deliberate
about where you're putting that color on there.
Don't get in a hurry
and try to get too large a brush and do this with a real quick pass.
You want to take whatever time it takes
to make sure that you've got this well covered,
and just go about it very deliberately
as you work into these small pointed corners,
these gaps and these openings between the design.
Make sure that you have your brush angled
so that the point reaches in there
and you don't have the rest of the brush dragging the stain across something
you don't want stain on.
And there's just really, again, no speedy way to do this,
but it makes such a difference.
You can already see what a contrast this is giving our piece of leather,
how much it's making those leaves and everything stand out.
This will, like I said, take you a little bit of time.
So just work at it.
You notice I am having to add more color to my brush
on a pretty regular basis.
And you also notice I turn it around quite a bit.
And the reason for that is so I can point my brush up
into some of these narrow little openings like this
so that it's just reaching in there with the very tip of the brush.
You want to careful with.
This is a really good stain, and if it should get somewhere
on your piece of leather that you don't want it,
it doesn't come out.
This is a permanent stain.
It stays in the leather really well.
I have told this to some others that are avid leatherworkers,
been at this for a long time but--
this waterstain, it's a newer product in the leatherworking market,
and having done leatherwork myself for 45 years or so,
I think this is the best stain
that leatherworkers have ever had available to them.
The colors go on nice and rich.
They are consistent.
It stays where you put it.
It doesn't rub off.
If you talk to somebody that's done a lot of leatherwork
for a long period of time,
they can tell you some horror stories
about colors rubbing off or fading out and such.
You just have really good results with this stain,
so don't be afraid to try it.
It goes a long way, too.
So once again, just take whatever amount of time that it takes you
to do a real clean careful job with this.
Be careful.
You'll notice I've got a piece of paper towel underneath my project
while I'm working on it.
Sometimes, if I were going into a small area,
and it looks like I got too much stain on my brush,
I'll brush off some of that excess
so that I have just a little bit there.
That way no mistakes are going to happen.
So that's part of the reason I had the paper towel there,
just to be able to control what that dye is doing.
There is some confusion
and we'll explain a little bit more
when we get to the antiquing step that we do,
but stains, and antiques, and dyes
all sound like maybe they do the same thing
but that's they really do different things with the leather
and on this project here
we're going to use an antique type of finish.
We're using the waterstain, which is really a dye,
for this part here and then, of course,
we'll be using a sealer as well.
So you'll see as we do this project
what the different results are that each one presents.
As you can see,
we've done the inlay dyeing and all of the background areas.
You want to check your project over real carefully.
I have missed places before,
so make sure that you look it over real carefully.
Make sure you've not left one of these little places missing.
It looks pretty weird when you do that,
and it's hard to go back after you've put the finish on.
This piece has dried overnight.
We put the color on there.
Give it plenty of drying time.
And again, that's one of the basic rules
when you're doing dyeing and finishing and so forth,
is make sure that you give plenty of time
between each of these steps to let the previous step completely dry
before you go on to the next one.
So what we're going to do next
is we're going to put a sealer over this.
This'll be the first stage of doing the final coloring.
The product that we're going to use is Super Shene.
I find that Super Shene is probably the best resister that there is,
and I call it a resister
because we're going to put an antique finish over the top of it,
and it will keep that antique from penetrating into the leather.
But we need a good finish on there first,
so we're going to use Super Shene to do that.
There are several ways that you can do this.
It's a clear acrylic finish
and so there are several ways you could apply it.
One method that is often used is using some daubers.
That works pretty good.
I don't like daubers too much.
Sometimes the little fibers and such will leave
some hairs on your project.
One of the other things that gets used sometimes
is a piece of sheep's wool.
Sheep's wool has been used by saddle-makers forever,
for applying finishes and such
because they have plenty of these scraps left over around their shop,
so it works really good for applying that.
But once again, it leaves sometimes these little fibers of wool
will be embedded in the finish on there,
so it will leave some of that residue behind.
So the product that I like to use or the means I like to use
to apply this is one of these high-density sponges.
These work really good.
They don't leave any bubbling or any of those kinds of issues
in your finish that goes on nice and smooth,
and it doesn't leave any of those residues behind.
This sponge here I took, and dampened it first
just to soften it up mostly.
I wrung all of the moisture out of it,
but I did soften it up.
That allows it to conform to the tooled leather there a little bit.
So when we get ready to put the finish on,
we put a pretty liberal coat of this Super Shene on there.
I just take and get a good amount of it into the sponge
and then using a circular motion,
I'll work that finish into the leather.
Just make sure that you get a good consistent coat.
Because we're going to be putting an antique sort of finish
over the top of this, I'm going to probably
put a couple of coats on here.
So we need to get this first one on and let it dry.
Then we'll come back, put a second coat on before we actually--
and let it dry before we go back and use the antique finish.
It goes on as kind of a milky-looking product like that
but when it dries, it will dry nice and clear,
and it gives us a real nice finish.
And really, that's all we would have to do to this piece of leather.
That would protect it.
That would make it somewhat water-resistant.
That's all that really needs to be done to this piece of leather,
but I found that using an antique type of finish over the top of that
helps to bring out some of the carving
and some of the details that we put into it.
Our first coat of Super Shene has pretty well dried
on this wallet back, so let's put a second coat on there.
This coat doesn't have to be nearly as heavily applied
as the first coat, so we'll just do a little bit this time.
And again, make sure we get over everything.
We'll let that one dry and be ready for the antique finish.
We're now ready for a really important step,
which I've been referring to as the antiquing step.
Let me explain again what we've done so far.
We've dyed the background with medium-brown waterstain.
Let that dry overnight.
Then we came back, and we put a coat of Super Shene on,
a pretty heavy coat.
We let that dry and then we put a second coat on,
a light coat, and we let that dry.
And so now we're going to put an antique effect to it.
The product I'm going to use is called Hi-Lite.
Hi-Lite is an antique-type of finish.
What an antique does is it settles down
into all of the cuts and impressions that you put into the leather,
and it leaves them darker.
Normally, if we had an unsealed piece of leather,
it would stain the entire piece of leather
whatever color that Hi-Lite stain is,
but since we have put a resist finish on there of Super Shene,
it will keep that Hi-Lite from staining everything,
but it will still settle into all of the cuts and impressions
and hopefully bring out a lot of the detail
that we've carved into this piece of leather.
Hi-Lite is an acrylic type of a finish.
The color that I'm using is called Briar Brown.
It leaves a nice warm color in the leather as well,
but we'll put this on now
and see what this does for this piece of leather.
To apply this, I'm going to use the high-density sponge again.
This is in fact the same sponge I've been using for the Super Shene.
You can wash this out when you're using these acrylic finishes,
so you get a lot of use out of them.
And I'm going to put this Hi-Lite on fairly liberally.
You can see I put quite a glob of it on there,
and then I'm going to put it on all over this piece of leather.
I want to make sure that there's enough on there
so that it gets down into every cut, every impression, every mark
that I put into the leather.
I want to make sure
that it's got a good amount of the Hi-Lite worked down into it.
This is how we achieve that antique effect.
Make sure that it's well penetrated;
and then, about as soon as I get it on there
and get it worked down into everything,
I'm going to take a paper towel, and I'm going to remove the excess.
And the reason I use a paper towel for removing the excess is, again,
I don't want some sort of a fiber to lift that color out
of all of those cuts and impressions.
And you can see that the piece of leather
is for the most part staying that original color that it was,
but it's got a lot of contrast now.
This Hi-Lite settles down into all of the pear shading.
Remember we used a pear shader that had a line texture.
We used a beveler that had a checkered texture.
We used the veiners and camouflage,
so you can see
how that color collects down into all of those impressions that we made
and it really provides a lot of depth.
It brings out all of the details of the design
that we've carved into this piece of leather.
So we'll let that dry a little bit,
and then we'll come back with a dampened paper towel,
and we'll go over it, and we'll remove a little bit more,
but we need to let this dry just a little bit.
You can already see how much additional contrast,
see how it brings out all of the cuts, and impressions, and everything
that we've stamped into this piece of leather.
It really makes them stand out.
Once this dries, we'll have to remove this piece of cardboard
from the back of it as well
so that it will be ready then to start assembling.
Thank you for joining me today.
Be sure and check back often here at our blog,
and we'll show you more tips and ideas
on how to get the most fun out of your leatherwork.