making walnut stain/dye

[sadiejane]

picked up a cupla bags of walnuts before the snow flew. had em drying out in the studio(makes it lots easier to get the hulls off).
had read somewhere about making walnut ink and i really wanted to try it.
yesterday morning i set about removing the hulls. crushed em best i could.
put em in a big old stainless steel pot i picked up off the curb sometime back.
simmered em all day and all night. let em cool this morning and strained out the hulls. if the old t-shirt i used to strain em is any indication, it shld be a lovely deep brown ink/dye. now its back on the stove to reduce to half.
there were numerous mentions of things to use to "set" the ink. including denatured alcohol. well, i found a cupla jack daniels bottles in the recycling and they both had a few drops of jd left in the bottom. think that'll work?

besides for lettering and other art work, was gonna use this to stain arrow shafts. and maybe it will work for a leather dye too. the arrows will get a coat of sealant after staining but the leather. well, thats why i gotta figure out a good medium to "set" so it wont rub off on clothes etc.

the stainless steel implements i used have cleaned up perfectly(oh yeah, stainless...). other than the t-shirt which was just a rag anyways, didnt ruin anything! figured i'd be making a huge mess. of course my hands are a tad "dirty" but that will wash off eventually. even the plastic funnel cleaned right up.
anyone have suggestions for a more "natural" setting agent?
thanks

[JackCrafty]

I think the term is mordant.  Tannic acid is a great mordant and you can boil it out of acorns (oak) and other plants.  Just google it.

[sadiejane]

thanks jackcrafty
didnt know that term. did google fixing agent, setting agent etc with some results. mordant got me lots more!
thanks again

[sadiejane]

doing a bit more ressearch and found this:


Paul Hogue offered this method for staining arrow shafts with walnut in Primitive Archer Magazine:

"Cut an opening halfway into a green walnut, and if it is ready, the inside will be black and juicy. The nut in the center is about the size of a quarter to a half-dollar. You can pluck the nut out if it’s in your way or leave it. You'll want to put on some thin, rubber gloves, because, like I said, it’s real stain. Next, just wrap the whole walnut around your arrow shaft (or whatever you want to stain) and run it up and down. Then with a clean rag, wipe off the excess juice and particles from the wood. If you decide you want the stain darker, just do it again in a few minutes."

[JW_Halverson]

Vinegar, salt, and alum also work as mordant. 

I dyed a linen longhunter shirt about 7 years ago with strong walnut dye.  I really liked the grey-brown color that resulted after 3 days in the dye bath.  I handwashed it in salty water several times to get the dye residue out and the color faded only slightly.  But the first time I machine washed it with modern detergent I lost about half the color.  I haven't washed it since!  The most it gets is sloshed in a creek, wrung out, and hung on a shrub to dry.

[osage outlaw]

I boiled some walnuts and made cover scent out of it this past deer season.  I put it in a spray bottle and sprayed my pants and boots.  It did stain my pants a little, but they are faded anyway.  It worked good.  The doe I shot in bow season was standing on my trail and didn't have a clue I was there.

Sorry for being a little off topic.  I just thought I would share this.

[Hillbilly]

For staining  wood, such as arrow shafts or bows, you don't need a mordant. Mordants are used to set the color when dying fabric and such that will be washed. I just let the hulls age and dry until they're black, moisten them, and rub them straight on the wood. This is the simplest, easiest method, and it works much better than the complicated methods.

[JW_Halverson]

Leave it to a hillbilly...erm, excuse me, the politically correct term these days is "Mountain William"...to get rid of the unnecessary steps and simplify things the way they should be.  Good work.

[toomanyknots]

"For staining  wood, such as arrow shafts or bows, you don't need a mordant. Mordants are used to set the color when dying fabric and such that will be washed. I just let the hulls age and dry until they're black, moisten them, and rub them straight on the wood. This is the simplest, easiest method, and it works much better than the complicated methods."

I second that. I just boil the hulls after there brown and dry, and use it for whatever. Wait till the water boils down to almost gone, but before it turns to syrup. Makes a great wood stain by itself from the tannins in it. Wife dyes her gray out with it.