Dye Antler

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DeerWrangler

New Member
I have been tinkering with knives for a few years but for the most part stuck with "This works so go with it" and that seems to work. BUT i have wanted to dyed antler handles that if done properly SHOULD look a whole lot like Stabilized giraffe bone but without the sheen that is common in stabilizing..
YES a lot of people seem to use PP and that does work BUT??

I have light acid dipped, cleaned and then used a stabilizer & mixed dye with it and then used a vac chamber. It does work more or less but again the stabilizer itself makes the antler plastic looking

The best results have been to use older weathered antler that has stress marks ( hairline cracks). Clean and rough sand the surface to remove much of the very outer weathered chalk layer to bring out the stress marks. ( I pre sand the areas where the handle will butt u to the guard and on hidden tang do all the drilling etc) Wipe down with alcohol.
I then place it in a jar of leather dye that has been diluted with acetone and let soak for a few days. Soaking for an extended period allows the dye to soak deeper into the antler....... Leather dye alone seems to just dye the surface but does not penetrate deep. The acetone seems to allow (reasons unknown) the dye to penetrate deeper.
Once the antler has been removed from dye and dried "NOW COMES" my problem.

The antler looks great but even with sanding etc some of the dye wants to rub off on hands and i am unsure of how best to prevent that without applying a sealer that WILL make the antler look plastic / acrylic. ANY suggestion as to what i do now?

There is a soak stabilizer that they use on pool ques called nelsonite that leaves the the base material a more natural look. But i have not tried it nor so i know how deep it would soak into the antler or IF it could carry the dye ( leather dye, reactive or alkaline based).

Anyone got any ideas
 
Antler is hard to dye because it is so dense. I think the reason you are getting some penetration is because the old antler is porous on the outer shell. I've had good results dying bone by soaking the scales in white gas aka Coleman Fuel until the bone is translucent, it takes a few days and then put it in Fieiblings (sp?) leather oil dye. It just might work for antler. Please try it and let us know. Culpepper has the formula but they aint telling.
 
Bruce Bump said:
Antler is hard to dye because it is so dense. I think the reason you are getting some penetration is because the old antler is porous on the outer shell. I've had good results dying bone by soaking the scales in white gas aka Coleman Fuel until the bone is translucent, it takes a few days and then put it in Fieiblings (sp?) leather oil dye. It just might work for antler. Please try it and let us know. Culpepper has the formula but they aint telling.
Click to expand...

Dipping the antler in a 30% Acetic acid etches the outer and opens up the pores- Then when you soak it in the Acetone diluted leather dye it penetrates a lot deeper than you would imagine and yet doesnt seem to soften the antler. SO FAR SO GOOD!

When you sand and buff the antler some of the high ligts are dulled but the undertone of color is still very strong and thats good.... BUT the ONLY issue i have is to HOW to keep the dye from transferring to your hands etc.... Mineral oil bath?? or leather honey.. Dont know what to do to sort it out..

All to often culpeper and others hold back info from everyone. Other than a custom generated formula most things are fairly simple. BUT its the fine tuning to make it as they want it to be is the difference....
 
I dye a lot of antler using leather dye and your process sounds good so far but (you just knew their would be one!)

Anyway leather dye is a powdered pigment suspended in a spirit base such as alcohol, acetone, etc. When dry there is always a surface residue that needs to be buffed off - using a soft buffing wheel, buff the whole thing - save the wheel for this only and keep it clean. Once done you can use various products for sealing the antler: oil alone does not generally work well since it can actually continue to lift the dye from the pores. Satin finish wood finish is good product - my favorite is Tried and True's real boiled linseed oil or their mix of oil and beeswax. Wax is also a good sealer - Ren Wax is good as is any good paste wax. The antler will take on a low gloss shine, but then older antler (a calcified boney material) will pick up a low gloss shine just via handling.

FYI - the leather dye company Bruce was referring to is Fiebing and FYI while the higher priced product is called Oil Dye it in fact has no oil in it. It is an improved version of their regular(cheaper) spirit dye and FWIW I found their regular dye penetrates the antler better. You can see examples of antler and bone I've dyed on my website www.wrtcleather.com
 
I always figure that there is going to be many BUT"S. There are many ways to skin a cat ao as long as the end product works then i am fine..
I have used Tung oil, Danish oil & bees wax to seal and polish many of my wood handles with good results and as far as antler goes it has only been dealing with dyeing not leaching out that i have any issue.
The Leather dye that i am using is the Fiebing as it works well and penetrates the antler better ( or at least i thing so) when diluted with acetone..

I would use the vac chamber to better pull te dye into the antler BUT as there are fumes that are not healthy & might cause the exhaust of the vac pump to isnite i have stayed away from that mode. BUT "IF" i were to mix one of the Alkaline or reactive dyes with water and used water as the carrier for the dye then there would be NO ?? Fumes to worry about and once the water evaporated and antler dried ( day or so in the garage) then the color would have penetrated deeper MAYBE...

I do want to thank folks for giving me info.. Everything is helpful and like i said i am just now piddling with dyeing antler and i have a bunch to learn about it.
 
re: oil causing leaching, in this case I meant non-drying oils like mineral oil as you mentioned in your OP. Drying oils such as tung or Danish will work fine as does the T & T I mentioned above.

Why not try using one of the new water based Eco dyes from Tandy if pulling a vacuum? While I have not used these as of yet, some fine leather crafters say the newest generation of the Eco dyes work as well as the equivalent spirit dyes without all the nasties..........
 
The pieces that i am tinkering with are test pieces "IF things don't work" OR "workable pieces in some way" if things do work. Since they are test pieces my color choices are random and not necessarily what anyone might want on a steel blade BUT. My first piece was taken out of the BLUE dye after soaking for 3 days, Hung to dry for 24 hours ( very little drip-age 3-5 drops at most).. after scuffing up with a 120 grit sanding sponge to get the surface dye removed i moved to a wire wheel on the grinder.... SURPRISED that there was more stick to the dye than i would have imagined. But the wire got down into many of the nooks and crevices. Buffed with a 4" wheel and almost NO dye transferred to the buffing wheel- just a very VERY faint blueish tint to some of the buffing wheel..Really surprised with that. next came a brush on coating of Danish Oil which i let dry over night last night. This morning i checked to see how this first piece fared. Wet hands and damp paper towel. ABSOLUTELY "ZERO" color transfer to my wet hands or the white paper towel.... This is more than surprising.... While the antler piece does show a gloss in areas where i had sanded down smooth all other areas have a more natural non gloss look. Yes the color is Blue but its a dusty blue and not a gloss blue... The core is penetrated 100% but that is because it is more woody/ softer. The outer layer, when cut back 1" still shows good color ( although lighter) throughout the outer layers... Would i have drilled the center core out for a hidden tang blade the color would have possibly penetrated better.DSC_2034.jpg For many this may be old hat to you but this is a workable process that can and will work.. Other pieces of fresher ( 1 year old but NOT weathered) antler show pretty much the same results....My next attempt will be to see how it goes using the vac chamber with water based dye...
 
Many years ago I experimented with bone and RIT dye. It comes in a rainbow of colors and is colorfast. It got good penetration and would be vacuum freindly, it worked fine just leaving it alone in a jar for a couple days. Wear gloves.


Rudy
 
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