Main Discussion Area > Primitive Skills

Black Walnut Dye

(1/4) > >>

Ranasp:
I live by a park that has lots of Black Walnut trees (I have one in my yard too, but this year it's being stingy with the walnuts)  so I put on some rubber gloves, grabbed a plastic bag and gathered up some walnuts.  There's a serious Black Walnut Fly problem here so any nuts that have fallen to the ground are rotten within a day from fly grubs so I tried finding ones that were freshly landed or just grabbed them off low branches.  I dehusked them into an enamelware pot with some water in it, brought it up to a boil, and let it simmer for over an  hour.  Then I poured it into a cotton cloth to catch all the husk bits, wringing it out to get the most dye and put it into glass bottles.  Grabbed a small piece of leather that I tooled and wiped several coats of the dye onto it, turned out pretty nice.  The original leather color is below the bird.  I like how the tooling captured more of the dye so the marks stand out.

Next time I'll try dehusking into a bag that I'll let sit in a bucket of water for a few days and try cooking that.  I'll also try reducing some of the existing dye and maybe adding lampblack to it to see if I can get a nice ink.

Spotted Dog:
The green hulls give you that green gold color. If you want a deep brown they have to be nasty black.
Boil and let cool for leather.

Ranasp:
Ah good, so putting them in a bucket a few days will do what I thought (make darker dye).  These things rot FAST.

Jodocus:
Yeah, us the older, black husks. If possible, leave the piece to be dyed in the soup for quite a while at as high a temp as it can stand.

Ranasp:
Fortunately I don't mind having a variety of shades, maybe I'll make a piece that uses only walnut dye but made in different ways. 

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page