That $80 bookbinding leather I ruined in one afternoon

I got a nice piece of goat leather from a craft store downtown three months ago. It was a deep red color and I spent $80 on it, which was a lot for me. I wanted to make a special journal for my sister's birthday. I tried to dye the edges myself without testing it first on a scrap piece. The dye bled all over the leather and made a huge stain right on the cover. I tried to fix it with some solvent, but that just made it worse and ruined the whole piece. So I had to throw it out and start over with cheaper materials. Has anyone else messed up a pricey material by skipping the test step?

2 comments

2 Comments

caseyl187d ago

Totally been there with woodworking projects. Spent a whole weekend cutting and sanding a nice piece of walnut for a keepsake box, then tried a new stain color without testing it first. Ended up with this weird blotchy mess that looked like a bad tie-dye job. It hurt to toss that wood in the scrap pile but it taught me to always test on scraps first.

wyattmitchell7d ago

Oh man that hurts just reading it. I did something similar with a $60 sheet of 1/4 inch birch plywood for a guitar build I was attempting. I got all excited and cut the whole thing out based on a template I found online, only to realize later the bridge placement was way off because I didn't double check the scale length. Had to scrap the whole thing and start over with cheaper MDF just to get the dimensions right. It stung bad watching that nice wood go to waste, but I learned my lesson about measuring twice and cutting once.