GB887584A - Leather colouring process - Google Patents

Abstract

887,584. Colouring leather. BARROW HEPBURN & GALE Ltd. April 22, 1959 [May 22, 1958], No. 16522/58. Class 93 Leather is decoratively coloured by applying thereto a coloured coat, applying a differently coloured coating composition on to the first coat over a part of the area covered thereby, and then overprinting either one or both of the differently coloured coatings with a pattern or patterns (i.e. pictures, designs, or other markings) in one or more further colours. Where the leather has been provided with a coloured finishing coat, it is preferred to apply a further overall coating of the same colour over the finishing coat, and to plate the leather after the finishing coat but not after the further coat. In an example, leather stock in the buffed skirt stage is tabled with a pigmented water dye, a coating of an aqueous emulsion colouring-composition is applied, the leather is plated to give a smooth gloss finish, a second coating of an aqueous emulsion colouring composition, preferably of the same colour as the first coating, is applied, and the leather is cut into strips of the desired widths and lengths. Each strip is advanced in contact with the periphery of a rotating disc, the edge face of which has a width less than the width of the strip and passes through a reservoir holding an aqueous emulsion colouring composition of different colour to the first two coatings, the strip being so guided that a differently coloured band is applied thereto either centrally or otherwise. After drying in an infra-red drying unit and cooling, the strip and a pigmented "Cellophane" (Registered Trade Mark) foil is guided between an electrically heated roller embossed in accordance with the pattern to be produced and a plain roller, the foil being stripped from the leather strip as it emerges from between the rollers. A number of colouring discs with independent reservoirs may be arranged to apply differently coloured bands to a number of strips at the same time. A series of infra-red lamps may be suspended over a support for the strips, which are turned over as they pass from the colouring discs. More than one band of colour, of the same or different colours, may be applied to a strip. More than one embossed roller, and two or more pigmented foils may be used for the same strip, the rollers being arranged side by side, or in tandem for successively applying different component parts of a pattern along one band, e.g. two embossed rollers in tandem and two differently coloured foils may be used with the same strip.