Using leather dye for staining stocks!

[Prospector8083]

I saw a beautiful red colored rifle featured recently in a post but can not seem to find the post using the search machine. The poster said he used leather dye to stain the stock. Who are you? I love that color!

[Eric Krewson]

My experience with leather dye on bows is that is fades over time.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

Eric is correct.  Fiebings leather dye is UV sensitive, and will fade out with exposure to the sun.  Also, since it is a stain ON the wood rather than IN it, it will wear and look aweful sooner than later.  though I used it for years, I no longer do because of the stated reasons.  I use Ferric Nitrate, tannic acid, and tung oil for finish now, and am delighted with the stamina, beauty, and longevity of the stuff.  Original rifles were not red.

[Eric Kettenburg]

Original rifles were not red.

*Cough, cough...*   

Well some were, but then it sure wasn't leather dye, which is awful stuff as noted above.

[Pukka Bundook]

Ron Ehlert used Fiebings on occasion. His personal rifle was done that way.
May depend how done?

[alacran]

I have used Fiebings as well as Laurel Mountain Forge dyes.  I use then both over stocks pre stained with with tanic acid and ferric nitrate
They both seem to fade.  Also guns stained with just Aquafortis or ferric nitrate will change color over time. Wood unstained and just varnished will change color over time. The only rifle I have that the color is the same as when I finished it, was dyed with Min Wax oil stain and coated with Marine Spar urethane, which has UV inhibitors.

[Eric Krewson]

All my stock are stained with aquafortis and all have darkened over time.

[Prospector8083]

That's why I ask questions! Thanks for your posts and I will be using aqua fortis!

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

Eric:  my blanket statement, like the words always and never, has touched a nerve.  I concede that there are rifles extant that have a reddish hue, sometimes depending upon the lighting.  I also concede that a slight reddish hue is desirable on some schools of rifles, Lehigh Valley comes to mind.  I was amazed though, when I thumbed through my copy of the Lancaster Rifles book, and the Movavian Rifles book, that the usual colour of the wood was not reddish in the slightest, but brown.  I think one has to be careful when trying to achieve that reddish look.

[Stophel]

Most old guns I've seen are actually pretty dang orange!     I do everything I can to not get orange, though!

As far as the Fiebings type leather dye, I don't even like it for leather!  It has a weird irridescent sheen and just doesn't look natural at all.

[thecapgunkid]

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that leather is more porous than wood.  That's probably why leather dye  changes over time when used as a wood stain.

However, I suppose it should be mentioned that leather dye also changes whilst on leather, and some wood stains change whilst on wood.

It is easier to..."read".. a hide with a sponge and a little water than it is to do so with wood.

So, go with your judgement and give it a shot.
My darkest and most durable stock has been the one where I used both...the leather stain as a base, whiskered with as opposed to water, and the wood stain in two coats afterward.  Consistent no matter what the lighting.




Hope this helps

Capgun

[rich pierce]

[smokepole45cal]

Some Trade Rifles were painted red and blue. Check out Clay Smith's page.

[dogcatcher]

There are 2 types of Fiebings dye, oil based and alcohol based, the oil based dye is better for UV exposure, also a good marine spar varnish has UV inhibitors. 

[Waksupi]

I asked Monte Mandarino how he got the colors he did on stocks. He told me brown, red, and yellow leather dye, blend it to your desired color.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

John Bivens used it too.  He called it NGR stain (non grain raising).  If you finish your rifle with it and hang it in a den for the rest of it's life, it'll stay just as you finished it.  But if you take it out and shoot it - a lot - it'll fade.  The faded colour isn't offensive though.  It took on a kind of dark honey look on one rifle I stocked in hard sugar maple.
Laurel Mt. Forge stains though, are not colour fast.  In fact they wear off with just handling.  Not impressed.  Tannic acid and Ferric Nitrate for me from now on.

[bob in the woods]

I used the leather dye on a rifle I built back in the early 90's.  It hung on the wall , over the front door for a few years, and eventually, the one side was noticeably lighter than the other. I re finished that rifle due to the washed out stain on the lock side, and it has become one of my favourites [ my .54 ]  for deer when not carrying my smoothbore.
I use the iron/ vinegar technique, which works well for me. I also use a  light yellow food colouring wash prior to this, which helps to show up any imperfections, scratches etc before final finish . I tend to use Tried and True Varnish Oil more than anything else these days.   

[thecapgunkid]

D Taylor raises an important point.  Before you go blaming the dye entirely ( I've had both the oil based and water based fade on leather) take a look at a hardwood floor where the sun comes in the window by folding the rug back.

None of us seem to grasp the chemistry or mechanics of why fading or color change occurs.  Patinas, fades and coloring are funny things that way.

The guys here have a lot to say, so this is a post I'll follow.

Thanks

Capgun

[rick/pa]

On the first two rifles I built in 1975 and 76 I used Bob Ditchburn's stain. On the first one I used the stain just as it came from the bottle and the stock has a reddish color. On the second one I added some of the small bottle of black stain that was included and got a better color. Neither has faded over time but then I don't think that stain is on the market anymore. I believe Mr. Ditchburn died about 9 years ago. The last two rifles I built in 2017 and 2018 I used Aqua Fortis alone and am quite pleased with the color. One rifle is darker than the other but the stock was bought back in 1978 and could be of a different type of maple.

[Herb]

Most of my Hawkens pictured here are stained with Fiebings dark brown oil leather dye, and I like it.  Some have other stains on them as well, and I don't know if they alone would have faded over time.  My Bridger copy was stained in April, 2013 in the pattern of the finish worn off the original rifle.  The worn places were stained with a maple kind, don't now remember what.  This rifle has hunted deer and elk, been shot a couple thousand times and has seen a lot of hot desert sun.  The stain may have faded, but I like it.  If I wanted it dark, I could restain it right through the finish, but I like the worn, aged look.  Here is what it looked like 08-14-2014:

(url=https://ibb.co/j8pbGF0][/url]
And here is what it looks like today (01-29-2020), with my last (too heavy for me) very close copy of Bridger's rifle, which will be stained with Fiebings dye.  The light makes a lot of difference in what the camera records.  You can left-click on this picture and the original comes up in imgbb.

[Mad Monk]

Got some free time on my hands and after rearing through the posts I figured I would add a bit to the subject.
My background in this is that back in the 1960s I worked for a local company that produced organic textile and paper dyes.  Worked in the lab as something of a process engineer and QC tech.

Almost all of the basic chemical compounds used to produce the organic dyes cause cancer.  Some more so that others. Even some of the food coloring we use today are cancer causing agents.

We made dyes that were soluble in alcohol but not water or oil.  We made dyes soluble only in water.  Then a few soluble only in oil.
A number of the dyes had to be made soluble in water by bubbling phosgene gas through them at the end of the dye base coupling reactions.  The dyes being made in water.  So the phosgene addition made them soluble in water and then you dumped common salt into the batches to precipitate the dye out of solution.  A cautious job that effected the exact finished color.  A bunch of side reaction products from the chemical reactions you did not want in the finished dyes.

Most of the organic dyes are fugative.  Meaning that fade from UV light exposure from the sun.  Some colors more so that others.  Generally the reds and yellows were the most fugative with browns and blacks being less fugative.  Then there were "metalized"dyes where you adding a chrome ion to the basic dye.  The addition of the chrome given a good barrier against sun fading.  They also used a lot of copper sulfate to make a dye water soluble. 

How you prepare the wood for staining will have a lot to do with how deep the dye is able to penetrate into the wood.  A good quality steel scraper really opens up the surface of the wood to allow deeper stain penetration.  Sanding and whiskering with very fine sandpaper actually blocks good stain penetration.  You have to look at the surface of the wood under a strong microscope to see just what this is all about.  The scraper opens up sides of the tubes that make up the wood structure.

Dyes dissolved in a solvent, such as alcohol, are at best surface stains.  The solvent evaporates so fast there is little, if any, penetration into the wood.  Water based dyes are a little better simply because it takes long for the water to evaporate off the surface.  That allows a bit more penetration into the wood.  The oil based dyes give the deepest penetration into the wood.  The oil does not evaporate.  And as the oil begins to move into the minute openings in the wood it draws in more oil from the surface into the wood.

Then when you look at maple and curly maple there is a good bit of variation in the density of the wood.  Tighter structure higher density wood does not allow penetration by the stain.  Softer lower density wood will allow more dye to enter the wood.

Back when I was working on the nitrate of iron stain I spent a lot of time bent over a nice binocular microscope watching how these worked in addition to looking at how the surface of the wood effected this.

Bill K.

[oldtravler61]

  Well being inexperienced at the time I built this gun in 1993.
 First gun scratch built. I used RIT leather dye. I shoot this gun all the time. It is also my deer hunting gun. So it has had its fair
share of use. It has not faded. But then like my friend says
 " God protects the ignorant ". Oldtravler