Has anyone tried to...

No, but it woudn't be too hard.  You could do it with common household tools and chemicals.

I've done it, and to pretty good success too. It's rather simple. Dyeing on the other hand... I used a bleach and water solution with a scrub brush for fading and a pumice stone for distressing. It worked, though I'm sure it wasn't good for the denim. It wore the fibers quite a bit, and the jeans feel rather frail. Though I bought them off the clearance rack at the Gap for 7 dollars. Perhaps better quality denim will hold up better under such conditions. Dan

I haven't tried, but sometimes it happens anyways while I'm wearing them. Tears in the knees, loose seams on the pockets, etc. And then it's time for a new pair of jeans.

I did it inadvertantly one day. I go home to visit the folks and an hour later im up on the hay rack slinging 90 lb hay bales. After doing that for awhile you end up resting them on your knees before trying to oomph it up to the 7th stack. One day distressing.

That's pretty much how mine start off. Much cooler when the distressing comes from actually doing stuff or by accident than when you do it on purpose. Just stitch them back together and patch as necessary, and you are good to go, better, even.

*Sigh* The natural distressing process was what I liked best about my now defunct 501s. I bought them without any distressing or wear whatsoever. By the end, the thighs were almost white from use, deep whiskers in the front, frayed bottoms, frayed back pocket where I keep my keys, and (best of all) the clear outline of my palm pilot, wallet, and cell phone in the front. You don't see *that* in many OTR new jeans, no matter how creative folks get with their treatments. Of course the crotch had also frayed and fallen out, at which point I decided they had had it. -boston

That is only bad part of self-distressed jeans.

I think you guys need to stop distressing your crotches so much.

It makes sense the part that gets the most action gets distressed the quickest. The crotch is always the first thing for me to fade and get ripped on jeans, aside from the corners of where my wallet is on the back pockets. Luckily the crotch is also the easiest part to patch up, as you don't have to tear open the leg of the jeans to get to it.

The jeans I have that have impressed me in being bulletproof in that area is my old diesel kratts. They were my first premium jeans and been going strong for 6 years? now.

I didn't really know. I did it on my own, as an experiment. I would err on the side of caution though and say dilute it more than you'd think. maybe a 1:3 bleach to water ratio. It will work even with very diluted bleach, it will just take longer, but you run less risk of ruining the jeans. Also, try to scrub with the grain, so as to be easier on the material. As far as the sanding goes, you probably want to use a pretty fine grain sand paper, but using the finest grain won't do much. I used sandpaper, and it was taking forever, and I got impatient, which is when I broke out the pumice stone. Post pics. Dan

You want to be *very* easy and use very fine grain sand paper when rubbing your jeans, because too course and it will start pulling out the warp threads and has an effect similar to pilling on cashmere.

when i was a kid in high school, the rednecks all had rings on their back pockets from the canister of copenhagen they carried there.