Big black leather bottle and dye-free too!

[Comrade Coffin]

This is my latest leatherwork project; a large leather bottle capable of holding half a gallon of beer. All hand made from vegetable tanned leather, which gave me the idea of using an old fashioned technique to turn it black.

Rather than using dyes, I steeped some steel wool in cider vinegar for a couple of weeks:-

You have to have the cap on loose, because the reaction between the vinegar and steel gives off gas. Once the vinegar stops smelling like vinegar the reaction is complete and you can stick the stuff in a jar.

You can then apply it to vegetable tanned leather and it reacts with the tannin and goes as black as a coal miners *** in a few seconds, with very little mess or smell.

I took some photos while I was doing the straps for the bottle. You can dip or rub the stuff in.

Strap sections 'before' and 'after':-

I tend to rub it in to make sure it is good and covered:-

No gloves & clean hands afterwards! The solution looks quite dark in the photos, but in reality it is grey-ish, a bit like old dish-water.

I quite enjoyed this bit of home chemistry and for very little money I have enough stain to dye loads of leather. Apparently there are methods to achieve different colours, so I will start experimenting & share my findings.

 

[crockett]

Thanks Doc for the great photos- your operation looks just like mine except I used a quart sized beer bottle- YEAH the stuff will explode if you put on a tight cap so leave it loose.
BTW it was Greywolf/Chuck that posted the recipe I used and it pretty much solved my issues with modern dyes that I don't like. Really good stuff. It won't shrink/dry/harden the leather.

 

[Glenfilthie]

Well now the wife and I are having a fight of biblical proportions!

She says the dye is basically ferric acid. I say no it's not - the vinegar is an acid that is neutralized by the steel wool and that the dye is some kind of aqueous oxident solution.

Any high school students out there that can help an old fart out?

Nice work, Doc! :thumbsup:

 

[LaBonte]

Well now the wife and I are having a fight of biblical proportions!

She says the dye is basically ferric acid. I say no it's not - the vinegar is an acid that is neutralized by the steel wool and that the dye is some kind of aqueous oxident solution.

Any high school students out there that can help an old fart out?

Nice work, Doc! :thumbsup:

you're right it's not ferric acid, but rather ferric acetate aka iron acetate is what you get when dissolving iron in vinegar (ferric nitrate = iron dissolved in nitric acid, etc).
The actual black coloring though is done via a chemical reaction between the iron in solution and the tannins (tannic acid) in the leather - it's why this method only works with true "tanned" hides i.e. those hides made into leather using tannic acid

While the most common blacking uses iron dissolved in vinegar (due to the high volatility of the acetic acid which basically means it gasses off faster - that distinctive vinegar smell is from the acetic acid, usually 3-5% of the vinegar), ferric nitrate can be used to blacken as can iron dissolved in plain old water since again it's the iron/tannin reaction that creates the blackening - that can be seen by wetting a piece of bark/veg tanned leather and laying a piece of steel or iron on it - the leather will blacken where it touches the metal...

 

[hogslayer]

Very Good,
Hope you wont mind if i suggest when you add your stopper the 14th century method is something like this

(Pete)

 

[Comrade Coffin]

That is a great looking stopper; I may try somethng similar.

 

[crockett]

I use a cork.