I know I’ve seen it mentioned someplace online, but. . . I can’t remember what folks use as a less-pricey alternative to the Tandy high-density sponges for dying leather. Anything I can get locally?
Might be way off, but makeup sponges are dense and made to spread things evenly. If those would work, bet you can get bunch cheapish at sally’s beauty supply
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For that matter, you can usually get makeup sponges at Dollar Tree…
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Thanks y’all!!
I use wool daubers (a ball of wool on a metal handle) which you can buy in bulk. You can also get wooden dowels with cotton on one end (think Q-tip on steroids) which work ok, I’ve had small issues with cotton strands from these catching on deeply tooled leather).
The cotton ones are cheap but single use. The wool daubers can be washed with soapy water and reused a few times. I use water-based dye. With alcohol dyes like Feibings both are one use only.
For larger pieces of leather you can use a piece of sheepskin about 2” square as an applicator.
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Thanks! It’s a couple of larger pieces, my kids wanted pleather desk blotters from Amazon, but Dad won’t sit still for that crap.
I personally prefer to use good ol’ sheeps wool (real not the synthetics).
For larger pieces I’d go with squares of sheepskin. You can buy bags of remnant sheepskin pieces at Tandy, Amazon, and the like:
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For large areas I use these sponges. http://a.co/d/91eFw2N
They work well for both water based dye, and for Aussie Leather Conditioner.
Also, I just last week tried using my airbrush to dye leather, again using a water based dye, and it came out really amazing. No streaking at all, and the coverage was fantastic.
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I’ve awlways used daubers like hankcowdog suggested and large car washing sponges. Just cut off a peice of sponge in whatever size you need
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