RIT Dye instead of walnuts?

Either the squirrel hunters took the year off or we had a real bad walnut season in these parts! Has anyone ever tried to "fake" a walnut dye job by using rit dye?

i assume your looking for the pulpy part ?i call it the hull but some also call the shells hulls .and does it matter if its dry ?i may be able to help you out as my place is surrounded by blk walnut trees .i cant tell you for sure because the walnuts didnt produce well around here .but the squirrels usually carry a bunch into my old barn to eat and theres sometimes piles around ..i'll check and see what i can find and let you know ...how much does it take to make a batch ?

I just mostly use 'em whole, too much hassle, but the green soft hull that turns brown/black is what yer supposed to use.I use about a 5 gal bucket of 'em in a trash can half full of water. Last year I had to be careful of twisting an ankle on 'em; this year I found 7!

thats about the way mine produced ,soons my back knits up ill go to the barn and see can i find enuff to send ya .will smaller amounts help you out ?

RIT has a part of their site that has custom colors you can mix. You should be able to find a color you like.

I tried their pearl grey on a frock I made. It came out a nice kind of dirty grey color (I don't know how else to explain it). Guess I should post a pic to explain better.

The recipe I used was 2-3 parts dark green and 1 part black. I added salt and vinegar to the dye mix to mordant the color. It came out a dirty grayish-green on cotton. Next time I would experiment with the addition of a little brown and/or gray.

Since the color of walnut dye is variable and depends on the material, try mixes until you find one you like.

I saw an ad in Muzzleloader from a guy who was getting a good price from dried shredded walnut hulls. Just add water, and boil. So instead of making a big batch of wet mix (lost 3 gallon jugs this winter when they froze and broke despite a generous addition of alcohol) last fall I experimented with dehydrating the hulls. When dry, I crushed them beneath a heavy board and stored them in coffee cans. No mold, no freeze, less room, and the dye content is very concentrated. Yet they won't stain your hands like fresh ones. Just add to a pot of water and boil as much as you need.

May want to try this next time you get a good crop and don't want to mix up a ton of it right then.

hey guys is there a point to which walnut hulls are too old to be used? for instance would this years crop lying on the ground be too far gone? my mom has around 20 trees on her property white and black walnuts mostly black if there isnt a point of no return on them i may be able to get some if this years are too far gone i can for sure next season i know my sister would appreciate it when she mows the yard

Don't believe they "go bad". I like'em all mushy and black when they've been laying around a while.When I got a bunch I'll put 'em in a trash can with a tight fitting lid and put 'em in the sun a few weeks to "ferment"! I was gonna start playing with RIT dye but wouldn't ya know it, the Walmart aint got any BROWN!!!

our walmart dosent carry brown either i found some in the craft section of a walmart a few towns over tho we got our brown at a store called hobby lobby they have website dont know how widespread these stores are tho

Don't forget there are other natural dyes besides walnut. Here's a site with some good ones:[url] http://www.aurorasilk.com/shop/dyestuffs.shtml[/url]

If you're going for a really backwoods look for an impression of someone who didn't even have access to these dyes, there are all manner of improvised dye you can use. Depending on the season (where the sap is in the tree at the time) you can use the bark, hulls or even leaves of many different trees and plants to get shades of gray and brown.

A few years ago, I noticed the stains that crushed pecan hulls left after a rain in the parking lot of the apartment complex I was living in. I gathered a few of the green hulls and boiled them with some scrap wool for about half an hour and got a very dark black.

We have a lot of red sumac around here and I'm going to play with some of that, no pecans though!

This is one of those, "this is no sh_t" stories! When I was a tadpole used to trap. My folks had a several walnut trees on the property. I used to use the walnuts to prepare my traps every year. Would take Mama's # 2 washtub, (after 1st time damage was done). I would pile all my traps as many would fit in the tub at one time and take whole bunch of walnuts and pour into tub, fill till water covered traps and bring to a boil. A word of caution here Mama's not going to like the smell and it is best to keep water boiling for 30 minutes or so. After they boiled let them sit until water cools where you can scoop off enough to be able to handle tub off stove. Green walnuts work best. They will have to be picked up after storm on ground or picked off of tree before they fall. When they fall the outside the green part has allready dried out. You can also use just the hulls ground up, but don't work as well. This process would turn my traps black, making them hard to see espescially in a water set.
Now for the brine that is left over do not let it get on anything you do not want to dye black, including your bare skin or Mama's stove or sink or the floor. There is something in the acid contained in the hulls that also acts as a rust preventative. I could use traps all winter and not have to worry about the rusting up. Also kept human scent down, I think this may have been sort of a masking process.
Any wood that has a high acid content will do the same thing. I have never tried it, but would be willing to bet green Acorns and the green leaves from Oaks would do the same thing. Oak has alot of acid in it. If you don't belive me get splinter off an oak board and see if its not all swelled up and huting by nightfall.Hope this info helps Stublin Wolf.

I know all about oak splinters! :rotf: And Locust ain't far behind! Soaking traps in walnuts goes way back for rust preventing.

I'd heard of boiling traps in "logwood" - what exactly is that?

trapping- one of my favorite things. Logwood is a tree with red colored wood that grows in British Honderous. Bits of wood can be left in water and a red dye will leach out. This red dye can be combined with other mordants to produce all sorts of colors. Logwood was harvested and shipped back to England in the 1800's. Logwood with a fancy grain was used in furniture and to haft knives.
Trappers use logwood chips or dust in water to dye traps. Its been a while but I think the deal is to first boil traps from the manufacturer to get rid of packing grease. Hang out the traps until they develop a light coat of rust as the rust holds the dye, now boil the traps in water/dye to color them a dark shade. On top of the boiling water add some beeswax/paraphin, etc and slowly draw the traps out of the water so that the traps get a coat of wax and then store traps in a scent proof bag filled with some leaves and twigs.
I don't think the mountain men, etc went to all that trouble- never read that they did.

stumblin wolf heres a pic of some grey strapping i dyed using rit dark brown the first pic is undyed the second after rit hope this works for ya

The last dyeing I did, on a powder horn throat and a hunting frock, was done with potassium permanganate. I can't give you any proportions for mixing as I just winged it. The liquid mixture will look like grape juice, but will turn whatever is put in it very brown, how brown depending on the mixture. Use some test pieces. Biggest PITA is getting the cloth rinsed out after it is dyed. As a point of interest, did you know a gallon of the mixture, rinsed from cloth, will turn an entire 6 foot wide stream purple for a distance of 100 yards downstream? At least, that's what I read somewhere. :redface:

I have gallons of Potperm but sure don't want to use it on leather!

I have faked a "walnut" look with Rit. I mix 1 dark brown with 1/2 plum and 1 cup of table salt. It actually looks really good.
I usually try a small amount on a scrap before dying.
Slash