I sometimes dye materials for colors I don’t have. Rather than order those materials that I already have or can get in white, the white lends itself best for me to dye any color I want. I know of four dying methods that most folks use. Rit Dye (the one I use mostly). Food coloring dye. Easter egg dye kit (tablets). Kool Aid (small package).
I use Rit Dye (preferably bottle but box at times) mostly because the other methods except food coloring (the little squirt bottles), are usually small amount or one time use types of dye unless I buy a lot of individual amounts (Kool Aid may come in larger size containers). This can be significant if I need to adjust a color’s darkness or lightness when I first test the right amount for the color and therefore need more dye for each application. Are there other dye methods folks use that I missed? Thanks.
Robert B. McCorquodale
Sebring, FL
“Flip a fly”
[This message has been edited by dixieangler (edited 10 May 2006).]
Well, another dye is Veniard’s. More variety and brighter colors than RIT. Then you can also use another method, hair dyes. You can get these at beauty salon stores. You don’t need a kit, just get the color and the ‘developer’.
You might want to look at Veryard dyes. These colors are geared toward flyting rather than clothes like rit. A nice olive instead of kelly green. Rit is good too. I use both rit and venyard. I dyed some bucktails olive, I didn’t use too much heat or vinegar, but the hair came out thin and crinkly at the ends, next time I will just se tap water temps.
Bob
Lives there a man with soul so dead,
who never has taken it into his head,
that a hackle neck from which he has tied,
would surely be better off were it dyed?
And so into the water now boiling quite wild,
goes the selected feathers about to be boiled,
with a spoon he stirs it about in the crock
and is surprised when it cooks,
and turns out like a rock?
I use the EAster Egg Kits. But I get the 40 oz cups from the convience store and put 6 tablets at a time in. You can thne put the feathers in the cup and dye them.
Do about 5 turkey feathers at a time.
You can do 6 or 7 Pheasant at tail feathers at at a time.
This way there is room and you get good coloration. You can do three batches of feathers before you neeed to replace the solution.
I just picked up about 40 kits and have another 30 or so coming.
Rick
Tea bags and vinegar produce varying shades of tan to ginger. It takes a bit of time especially with caribou, but it doesn’t have to be on stove heat the whole time.
Has anyone tried Pantone pens to colour small batches of feathers.
I have been reading Roger Fogg’s book on North Country Flies and he recommends them.
Yes, you can mix Easter Egg colors. I’ve used small tea cups instead of coffee mugs, which is perfect for part of the dye liquid, plus the egg, and have some liquid left over to mix for other colors. We’ve mixed green and yellow for chartreuse; blue and green for teal/turquoise (depending how you balance the porportions); orange and yellow for salmon/peach (again, porportions).
There are some really neat combinations. If you want to repeat them, it might take measuring spoons and a note pad.
Whatever method or brand of dye you may use…always keep your dye baths 140 degrees or less…or you will get what Castwell ends his cute little poem with…Just some thoughts
“I’ve often wondered why it is that so many anglers spend so much money on,and pay so much attention to.the details on the wrong end of the fly line.If they took as much care in selecting or tying their flies as they did in the selection of the reel and rod,They might be able to gain the real extra edge that makes it possible to fool a fish that has,in fact,seen it all before” A.K.Best
Everyone wants to excel in this sport but at the same time we let traditionalists place restrictions on our tactics, methods, and ideas. I always assumed that fly fishing was a sport that allowed imagination, creation, adaptation, investigation, dedication, education, revelation? : Fox Statler, On Spinners (Not the dainty Dry Fly kind) “Spinner’d Minner Fly”