Everyone has to dye at some point....
Dyeing stuff. The allure of it hits just about all of us at some point in our tying lifetimes.
Everyone has to dye at some point. It seems to be a given that we will all try this, either out of necessity or just from the desire to see if we can.
Tried it. I'm pretty handy and a dedicated do it yourself type. Results were less than poor. Got better at it after several tries. Unfortunitly, I can add.
Don't do it.
Here's why,
Yes, you can dye fly tying materials to get a particular shade or color you want. There are several thousand pages of instructions on the www telling you how to do so with a variety of materials.
From the simple drop of food coloring and some vinegar in the microwave, to dye vats with commercial grade dyes and temperature controls. Detailed formulas for getting particular shades abound. One concern I had was the sheer number of different formulas using the same brand of dye to get 'olive'.
But it's wasteful. No one gets it right the first time. Sorry, but it's just the truth. Often the first batch comes out some odd color, and human nature tends to make us want to believe that we can use if for something since it's obviously unique. But if you are willing to take what you get, then why bother to dye anyway?
The only real purpose I can see to dyeing your own materials is to get a particular shade or color you can't get easily ready colored. If you can't do that, I see no purpose to it besides the joy of just doing it. If that is a reason enough, then go for it.
What I always see from a beginners dye attemps, inclucing my own, are several batches of odd colored fur or feathers. How many of these basic failures happen depends on the prerserverence of the operator and the amount of materials he's willing to waste. If he's persistent, this can take from two to dozens of tries, depending on the techniqe and comprehension skills of the operator.
Eventually, the technique gets refined to the point where our dye artist now has one color that he can do correctly. So on he goes to another color. While there are fewer odd colored batches, there are still some of them with each color change until the formulation is just right.
Guilt may cause him to use up the odd colored stuff eventually. It's just as likely that it will go unused simply because it's not right, and the reason for doing this was to get it right, not settle for whatever comes out of the dye bath.
If you were really good at chemistry in school, you may be the kind of person that's good at dyeing your own materials. If you are a pretty good baker, same thing.
Almost all of the folks who are good at it will invariably tell the rest of us that it is simple and easy to do. Some of them will even tell us that they got the exact color they wanted on their first try. I don't buy it. I watched a guy tie a full dressed salmon fly over several hours one evening. Told us all how easy it was as he went along, tying in, removeing and retying, putting things on, then removing and replacing until it was just right. Easy?
Doing something like this is a skill. It requires the correct materials, the correct techniques, and practice to be good at it. Until they make a dye in a spary can, not everyone can do it easily. Anyone who wants to learn to do it can, but there is a learning curve and it can be pretty long and steep for some folks.
I know my own limitaitons. I could learn to do this, but I can't justify it in terms of wasted materials and dollars. Predyed materials are too cheap, and my time and sanity (may be way too late on that one, though) are worth too much to me. Beside the whole being messy thing that SWMBO objects to.
We all dye eventually, so dye if you must.
But I'm not dyeing anymore.
Buddy
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Originally Posted by Ray Kunz
