black feather dye

[medicinewheel]

I bet dark red/oxblood would look pretty sweet on those grey goose feathers.

Sure would but from my experience red will cause problems when getting wet. Red pigments generally seem to be difficult to seal, too.

PS: that goose feather looks great!

[le0n]

also, the dye did not bleed into the areas outside of where it was applied, which was kind of cool.

i semi-retract this statement.

the dye bleeds in a linear fashion, but, the drier the paintbrush is, the easier it is to control the bleeding.

here is what i tried with the cheapest brush i could find in my house this morning:


the dots were a challenge with the wet brush and the stiff plastic bristles didn't help either. the stippling was easy with the dry brush.

in regards to the goose feather oil, the dye does not seem to penetrate to the back of the feather. especially in the area where a normal fletch is extracted from.

i'm guessing one could get better results with a smaller paintbrush of better quality.

[Aaron H]

Very neat, thanks guys

[Thunder]

Hey leOn,
If those are the goose feathers I gave you, I soaked them in warm water and Dawn dishsoap to clean them. Probably got most of the oils off.

[le0n]

^^ they are.

thanks.

[DC]

Does the dye affect the way the vanes interlock? Said another way, if you ruffle the feathers up can you preen them back into shape?

[Tracker0721]

This is awesome! I gotta buy some dye!

[le0n]

i meant to take another photo yesterday morning, but i got distracted with something else.

i washed the feather to get the residual dye off of it. my main goal was to see if i could cause the spots to streak if i rubbed them too hard. the result was a slight blur in the direction that i was scrubbing. this can obviously be avoided if you don't try to smear the dye. essentially, you're moving the excess dye around; and you can either rub it in to the immediate surrounding areas, or allow the water to move it away from the surface with gentle agitation.

either way, when i was finished the feather still looked the same.

Does the dye affect the way the vanes interlock? Said another way, if you ruffle the feathers up can you preen them back into shape?

the dye did not affect the way the vanes interlocked. but then again the vanes were locked when i gently applied the dye. then it was left to dry completely.

i'll re-wash/ruffle the feather tonight and preen it back into shape. those last few photographs of these steps should be a nice addition to this thread.

[le0n]

washed again (i actually pulled the feather backwards through my fingers a few times to really ruffle it):


waved it around to get most of the water off:


after preening:


the flip side, note the area where the dye does not penetrate:

[JW_Halverson]

have you tried applying on the underside as well?

[le0n]

^^ yeah i have. the first band i did was on the front and back.

it just sort of washed right off of the back.

on the next attempts, i just applied it to the front of the feather.