Oil skin cloth

[eat moose meat]

This may sound like a stupid question. But what color was original oilskin cloth. :hmm:

 

[Ridge]

It's my understanding that the color varied by whatever pigments they added to it to neutralize the linsead oil.

 

[dryfly]

For longhunters, most were died with walnut hulls. And they do not neutralize the linseed oil, only time will do that.

 

Iron oxide was a popular color, a yellow shade is also mentioned. If you use a linseed oil based waterproofing, even without added pigmant, you will get a yellow tone.

Natural pigments are hard to acquire in some areas.

Be sure to cut the linseed oil with mineral spirits or you will have a gooey mess that never dries. Follow the instructions on the can.

We have several threads on this subject in the archives.

:front:

 

[Claude Mathis]

For longhunters, most were died with walnut hulls.

That seems to be a popular belief these days, due in part to Mark Baker. This is one of the reasons you see so many walnut colored "Longhunters" today. It's almost a uniform.

I think a lot of folks dyed their clothes with walnut hulls, if they had them, but I don't think we can attribute a specific color to any one "profession".
:imo:

 

[big bore 75]

I will second and third that, even in one of the baker taps he also says that other colors were also worn it walnut brown was his choise as for pigments red iron oxcide can be gotton from feed mills thats were I have aquired 10 pounds of the stuff its going to last me a life time as well as yellow going to do me a 8x8 fly out of it and take it on trecks with it I don't mind the weight at all.
bb75