Question about dying feathers.

[travis.gardner 0]

I see all of your beautiful flies on here and it makes me green with envy. This summer I will be posting some of my own flies, right now law school is kicking my butt time wise. I was wondering how to dye feathers, more specifically what do you use? I have heard about using kool aide, but I was wanting to dye some dry fly saddles that I bought for cheap and didn't know if kool aid would be a good idea. I was also thinking that kool aid might give too much color, in that I am looking to try to dye a regular grizzly cape olive, and another grizzly cape more of a olive yellow. Like I said, I got these capes cheap and I was wanting to play around with them. Any help is greatly appreciated. Travis

[mdraft1 0]

check out: Dyeing and Bleaching Natural Fly-Tying Materials by A.K. Best. It contains all the information you will need.

[buggybob 0]

There are a lot of different acid dyes out there. Rit works if you use the liquid form otherwise you can get really variable results because of the dye mixtures in the powdered form. Fly Dyes and Jacquard Dyes are also good, have a variety of colors for fly tyers and are fairly readily available. Art supply stores usually carry the Jacquard dyes and you can google Fly Dyes and order direct from the manufacturer if you want.

 

It's pretty easy no mattter what you use for a dye.

[fishabuoy 0]

Travis -

 

In addition to AK's Book - there was a thread a couple weeks back where we talked a little about this, mainly using RIT or Jacquard dyes. Some info to get you started here :thumbsup:

 

Hope that helps

Bob

[Alex_F 0]

Hi Travis, here's a basic dyeing step by step that I did a while ago, you might find it useful. For a medium olive I use a mix Veniard's brown olive and dark olive. For golden olive I use Jacquard sun yellow over dyed with Veniard grey. In the SBS I was using Veniard's dyes but it works equally well with Jacquard. The only real difference with the SBS and now is that I got some glacial acetic acid and diluted it to a 15% solution which is a bit stronger than your average vinegar. Other than that I use pretty much the same procedure. I mention the importance of keeping a note of time and quantities, this only holds true if you want consistency of results over a number of capes dyed the same colour. If it's just a one off then there's no need.

 

I can't comment on RIT as I've not used it myself. Even so, AK Best's book is a good read with lots of handy hints.

 

Hope this helps.

 

ATB

 

Alex

[perchjerker 0]

I have used both Veniard's and powdered Rit with great success. The powdered Rit MUST be thoroughly dissolved BEFORE adding your materials to it or you can get less than satisfactory results when using it, or any other powdered dye for that matter. Just follow the directions provided with the dye. Regardless of the dye used, DO NOT get the solution too hot or you can permanently damage the integrity of the material itself;both the skin and the hair or feathers.