Post subject: Sealing suede for finish application
A month or so ago, we got a call from someone in Michigan, or Minnesota (pretty sure it was an "M" state somewhere in that part of the country) who had several full hides, which I assumed from the description to be suede splits. This person wanted to color these hides for use as seat-covers in an automobile, and wanted them to be wear- and stain-resistant. Given the difficulty of re-coloring suede and its natural lack of wear- and stain-resistance, I suggested that the hides would have to be sealed and re-colored using a topical pigment to be able to fit the application parameters. This person wanted to know if we could sell him the products to accomplish this. I told him that I didn't know, we'd never had to do this before. I told him I'd do some tests, and get back to him. So, I cut a few samples from the scrap-pile, and tried it out. Primer didn't have enough resin-presence to effectively seal a full suede, so I took some of our soft-filler and did a single swipe across the suede side of the sample. I then cured it and applied color, and then top-coated it. The break was decent, didn't affect the flexibility, and the hand was not to bad. I was amazed that a single swipe of filler was all that was necessary to seal the suede. I have no idea what practical application this has, but I thought it was a pretty cool experiment.