Thread: Results of New dye jobs

How long did you soak the feathers? And did you take them out and have them dry on newspaper. Looks like it could be one heck of the mess

All I ever read is that Veniards is the dye of choice for tying materials! I am sure it's a learning. Experiance too though! Trying to get just the shade you want on one color may take a bit of experimenting.

Thanks Skip...FM may provide some more details for us!

I do them for about 10 minutes, I'll even shake them to make sure. I set up paper towel about 5 double pieces thick on each side ahead of time to lay the feathers on after rinsing. I just followed the directions that came with the dye.

Wearing rubber gloves take the container with your dye and flank feather and pour it through a strainer I have the cold water running and I rinse the bottle. Run the cold water over the feathers working them and when you see the water run clear - take a big handful of feathers and squeeze them, all you should get is water. Lay them on the paper towel and get all the single ones still in the strainer and put them on the paper towel and fold the other side over and press them. You will get a bit of color but that's okay.

Take the dyed wet feathers and put them in an old pillow case with a static sheet, tie a knot in it and toss it in the dryer. I do 5 mins of heat drying and then put them on 10 mins of no heat. Check them and when dry pack in ziplock bags. Fur pieces and the heavier wing feathers I tried with RIT and Kool-Aid I pressed and dried between paper towel and checked them daily - watching video's on youtube some used a hair dryer to help speed drying.

Yes it can be a mess if you don't take your time!!!! Make sure you have real Ball canning jars with the raised letters! They do have some that aren't and I found out the hard way when I poured hot water into the bottle it cracked with purple RIT dye in it!! The only thing that saved me was that I had an old cookie sheet with newspaper on it that I have the jars on when dyeing.

I'm still a rookie at this!!!!! but I'll help where I can.

Fantastic info...thanks

Glad to help!

FM.....have feathers from a buddy who just returned for down south. Question......did you clean the feathers prior to starting process. I believe you also received yours from some duck hunters.

Yup real quick and easy to clean up - I have a plastic coffee jar with lid and I mix some borax and dawn foaming dish liquid you don't need much. I check them real quick as sometimes when they pull them out there were bits of meat on them just trimmed it off with scissors then dump them in the wash. I use medium hot water with the borax and dawn and shake em up - If you put too much water in you'll know when you shake the container you won't feel the water banging around in the jar.

After shaking let em sit for 20-30 mins then shake again - then pour them into a mesh strainer and rinse them off. At this point if you're ready to try dyeing them they're soaked real well - if not toss in a pillow case and 5 mins of heat in the dryer then 10-15 just air until dry. I put a couple of anti static sheets in the pillow case with the feathers but you'll still have some that have the cling effect!! Get all the feathers out and carefully take the pillow case outside and snap it to get any of the fuzz off the pillow case. Then put in zip bags and you're ready to go.