Dying feathers, fur and fingers

[jact55]

Do you all like saving money?
I don't, otherwise I wouldn't fly fish.
But the color range of flies make for large expensive collections of animal products real fast.

I've been researching dying feathers and fur. Did my first attempt last night, with stuff around the house.

I heated water to close to boiling, added blue food coloring. Soaked in grizzly hackle, bucktail, white calf hair, and a patch of cream colored rabbit. After a few minutes of stirring I dumped in maybe a 1/4 cup of apple cider vinager. I'm out of white vinager. It didn't seem to have an effect on color.

Bucktail didn't turn out too well, other did dye well, and no color rubbed onto my fingers after drying.
The hackle feathers are kinda messed up, didn't go back to their normal state. Might try resoaking and trying to get them back right while wet.

I'd be interested in hearing if any of you dye product. How so? And if there are different methods for different substrates.

Bonus points if anyone used natural pigments and minerals and such to obtain any colors. I've made my own oil paints in the past and have a collection of pigments. Although I'm sure lead, arsenic, mercury and everything else that goes into oil paint isn't good for the fish lol. But I like natural earthy things, so if anyone has ideas here

I know Rit works also. But curious what folks do here. Thanks

 

[TicTokCroc]

@Scottp is the resident dye master. Not sure there's any tutorials here for his process.

 

[Tom Butler]

I've done feathers this way a few times now.
https://pnwflyfishing.com/forum/index.php?threads/dying-fethers.3774/

 

[Bob Rankin]

These are some pheasant feathers that I have dyed.

 

[Scottp]

@Scottp is the resident dye master. Not sure there's any tutorials here for his process.

Here’s an old SBS I put together a while back. The procedure is the same for Koolaid as it is for RIT; both are acid dyes for natural substrates ( I did find by accident that it also works on Swiss Straw, but can’t speak for any other synthetic materials). If you go to the Rit site, you can find lots of formulas for different colors. I use the “small” size since I generally dye very small amounts of materials. Be aware that this takes a bit of experimenting; the colors don’t always turn out as advertised, which may be a function of the substrate, concentration, etc. I only use Rit in liquid form; tried the powders years ago but the liquid is much easier to work with. Hope this helps

Regards,
Scott

ps - not sure about the “master” part; I’m just lucky I get up early in the morning and my wife sleeps in. If she saw what I was doing in the kitchen she’d kill me.

If you want to see someone who knows their shit, check out Cap’n Fishy’s work on the U.K. Flyfishing site; fantastic stuff.

 

[Ceviche]

I'm a little confused about which RIT dye to use on feathers. When I went to the store, I saw two types: the regular and stuff for synthetics.

Am I wrong in assuming that the regular RIT works for feathers and hair (protein: silk, feathers, hair), so long as you use vinegar as a fixative. The business of using salt as a fixative is for natural, plant fibers, like cotton, linen, and rayon. I skipped on the synthetics dye, as my focus is on animal fibers. I noticed there was a specific, special product sold for that purpose.

In comparing the different discussions on the fixatives, unless I misread some of it, there wasn't an across the board agreement.

 

[Obsessed]

I'm a little confused about which RIT dye to use on feathers. When I went to the store, I saw two types: the regular and stuff for synthetics.

Am I wrong in assuming that the regular RIT works for feathers and hair (protein: silk, feathers, hair), so long as you use vinegar as a fixative. The business of using salt as a fixative is for natural, plant fibers, like cotton, linen, and rayon. I skipped on the synthetics dye, as my focus is on animal fibers. I noticed there was a specific, special product sold for that purpose.

In comparing the different discussions on the fixatives, unless I misread some of it, there wasn't an across the board agreement.

I think regular RIT is what you want. This dye is actually a combination of different types of dye including acid dye which you fix with an acid like vinegar. The rest of the dye will probably just remain in the dye bath. The synthetic dye might be similar but probably not optimized for protein fibers.

 

[Denwor54]

Not sure if this helps I switched to jacquard dyes and use citric acid combo and the colors are really nice. I used to use veniard dye and vinegar combo and my wife didn’t like the smell and mess. Here are some samples of the results