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Walnut dye
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Free Trapper
Picture of LeeRoy
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I am making a canvas haversack, and would like to dye it with walnut dye. The question is, when I put it into the dye, do I need to add salt or anything to the dye bath?

LeeRoy


Keep your powder dry.
 
Posts: 171 | Location: Southern Nevada | Registered: 14 January 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
Picture of SCLoyalist
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I never tried walnut dye on cloth, but from what I've read you don't need a mordant with walnut dye, but using alum or iron as a mordant will yield a darker color. Sounds like a situation that calls for dyeing a couple of sample swatches with and without alum to see what shade floats your boat.


Here's a health to the King and a lasting Peace. May Faction end and Wealth increase....Old Loyalist Ballad
 
Posts: 767 | Location: Panhandle Florida | Registered: 02 February 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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I use walnut dye all the time on canvas, making a haversack or two....works great. I then paint hot beeswax on the very warm canvas, absorbs great, waterproof, and lasts and last....or...mix and little tallow with the beeswax for coating if the weather is cold. It also protects the walnut dye!!!


"Don't Retreat, just reload"
 
Posts: 411 | Location: Oregon Territory | Registered: 26 February 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
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One wee point in regard to Walnut dye. Wash it very well after dying...and wear elbow length gloves when working with it. If you do not wash it well after, it will dye everything it contacts if it get the least bit wet. If you somehow dye yourself, it will wear off in a few months.
Woody
 
Posts: 36 | Location: Wet side of Warshington | Registered: 30 April 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
Picture of dances with mules
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In my experience... if you really wash the fabric after dying, you'll wash all the dye right out of it. I leave the item soaking in the dye for a couple weeks, frequent stirring. Then squeeze out excess solution, rinse a bit and call it good. I've never had the dye stain my skin. If making a haversack or whatever and you beeswax it,the dye is locked in. I'll through some rusty iron in the dye bath. I've tried adding vinegar. Can't say I've noticed a difference. Boiling the hulls will make a stronger dye. I usually let the hulls/nuts soak and stew in a barrel all summer... so it's always ready to go. A little rubbing alcohol can help if it gets odiferous... The biggest joy of black walnut dye is that it's so simple. You don't need mordants, fancy techniques.... just wet the fabric and dunk it. Let it soak a long time.
 
Posts: 16 | Registered: 11 October 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
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If you put rusty nails in it the dye will be darker.


Some people are born to be tied down, some people are born to be free.
 
Posts: 21 | Registered: 27 March 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Free Trapper
Picture of LeeRoy
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Thanks for all the input.
Any and all input on this will be a great help.

LeeRoy


Keep your powder dry.
 
Posts: 171 | Location: Southern Nevada | Registered: 14 January 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Hivernant
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Leeroy

I've put some vinegar in the rinse. This will help lock in the dye. I typically only wash my stuff once a year. When I take it out of the washing machine and it is totally wet I go ahead and dye it again. My equation is one wash, and one dye a year. It typically takes on a deeper color at this point.

Mark Baker has some good instructions and recommendations in his first book.


Rio
 
Posts: 140 | Registered: 18 March 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Rio

Thanks for the reply.

LeeRoy


Keep your powder dry.
 
Posts: 171 | Location: Southern Nevada | Registered: 14 January 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Free Trapper
Picture of LeeRoy
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Hello the fire.

I am glad to be able to continue to visit this site, in my quest to learn the crafts involved with muzzleloading.

I finished stitching my haversack, and used some walnut dye on it.

My take on a haversack. It was made from a old canvas tarp of unknown or origin, waxed linin thread and a cotton web strap. Size 11" X 11".
Any comments welcome.

LeeRoy

This message has been edited. Last edited by: LeeRoy,


Keep your powder dry.


 
Posts: 171 | Location: Southern Nevada | Registered: 14 January 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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Looks good. Kind of motivates me to get mine dyed. It's made from a wore out bed tarp. Where did you get the cotton webbing?
 
Posts: 507 | Registered: 14 August 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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scoundrel

I was a my local army surplus store, they had a rack of webbings of all kinds. this was off of the 2" roll.

LeeRoy


Keep your powder dry.
 
Posts: 171 | Location: Southern Nevada | Registered: 14 January 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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I have dyed a few things with walnut dye. Dont use a machine washer EVER! hand wash in the sink and hang dry when it becomes a litle too gamey. I dye lots of leather for shooting bags and straps with it. I dissolve iron pills in the mix. Sometimes the leather comes out of the bath with sort of a purple color. Dont freak out, its ok. It will turn a deep dark brown when oiled.
 
Posts: 552 | Location: SC | Registered: 03 May 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Free Trapper
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I used a steel pot, cut off piece of a propane tank, to heat the walnut husk in. Maybe that is the reason that it is a dark gray color. I will use a aluminum pot, for more of a brown color.

LeeRoy


Keep your powder dry.
 
Posts: 171 | Location: Southern Nevada | Registered: 14 January 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Factor
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Well it's pretty well known that an iron pot will add iron oxide to the dye bath, and give you a "sadder" brown than just the walnut, but I don't know how much oxide you get from a steel or stainless steel pot. According to Henley's Twentieth Century Formulas, Processes, and Trade Secrets you can add "copperas" which is Iron 2 sulfate to darken the color, but you can get a brighter color by first soaking the fabric in a solution of water and alum, and then transferring that wet into the walnut dye bath. If you first treat the item with a solution of water and lead acetate, you should come up with a more reddish brown.

However, as this is a natural dye, you never know what trace chemicals might be in the hulls or the water or both, so might get different results.

LD


It's not what you know, it's what you can prove
 
Posts: 3843 | Location: People's Republic of Maryland | Registered: 10 November 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
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Have never used walnut hulls for dyeing and don't have a source nearby that I know...yet. Any recommendations on sources to buy hulls? I can find powder and blasting media, but I guess this is not what I want?

Pat
 
Posts: 13 | Location: foothills of the Blue Ridge, at the meeting of the Mountain and Carolina Roads  | Registered: 15 November 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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Look in the back of the muzzleloader magazine.
 
Posts: 507 | Registered: 14 August 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Free Trapper
Picture of LeeRoy
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Thanks for all of the replies.

Loyalist Dave, I will keep you info in my file that I set up for my experience with Walnut dye.

VALongrifle , I gather up a few, like a 5 gal bucket full, when visiting in Missouri.

scoundrel, thanks for the source.

LeeRoy

This message has been edited. Last edited by: LeeRoy,


Keep your powder dry.
 
Posts: 171 | Location: Southern Nevada | Registered: 14 January 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
Picture of Stophel
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VALongrifle, if you're in the Blue Ridge mountains, you should be nearly surrounded by walnuts.

I have to find a new ready source for them, myself. I was getting them from a tree in my sister's yard, but she has moved. I've gone and picked them up off the street behind the community house in town (they're actually a road hazard), and you can probably stop anywhere you see them in the road or in someone's driveway and they'd be glad to let you get them out of the way!
 
Posts: 48 | Location: Kentucky | Registered: 02 August 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
Picture of Stophel
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I'm TRYING to dye some linen right now. No matter what I do with it, mordants or no, it just doesn't dye well. Of course, linen is notoriously difficult to dye anyway. The best I can get it basically a grayish tan. Barely darker than the natural linen color. I'm still working...

As far as washing it out, durn right I'm washing it out. If the color washes out, it's not dye, it's dirt. I want dye, not dirt. Wink

I think my walnuts are just too old (year before last) and have lost their dyeing properties. The brown washes out COMPLETELY, leaving just the smoky gray, which comes simply from the ferrous sulphate. It's a nice color, actually, but way too light. Yes, I'm going for camo. Wink I guess I'll have to wait a few months to get some fresh nuts...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Stophel,
 
Posts: 48 | Location: Kentucky | Registered: 02 August 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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