Dyeing bucktails.

[PACOFRANSICO]

A bunch of my buddies got together and decided to dye some buck tails we tanned up. We had a pretty good days work. Here is some pictures.

What we have left!

 

[SBecker]

Dang that's a lot of buck tails. You must be friends with Dan Morris.

 

[PACOFRANSICO]

We did them with "Guru's" tutelage. He pasted on some of his secrets.

 

[ebroesicke]

Acid dye? I have been using kool-aid with pretty good success, but i don't think it works as well on feathers, so i might try something else.

 

[Fishidiot]

Neat!

(Well, maybe not literally)

 

[PACOFRANSICO]

We used acid dyes. Its a pretty cool thing to mess with custom colors. The quality of the tail we are dying we cant find in comercial produced buck tails.

 

[flytyingfred]

Paco your dyed tails look great. I like to dye and bleach also but have not used any acid dyes yet. I really like the color the yellow and green came out. I have only used rit dye and cool aid so far but will have to look into the acid dye process. Is it more time consuming or much trickier than the rit or cool aid? Thanks for posting the pics.

 

[PACOFRANSICO]

Nope Id say youd be fine using rit. Just set the dye with vinegar after you bring it up to temp.

 

[afishinado]

Nice job, Paco. A lot of work, but judging from the size of flies you fish, that's only enough for a dozen or so flies! ;-)

 

[PACOFRANSICO]

I all i did was mix some dye and fallowed directions. Im no expert @ this. but it lets us use better quality materials for 1/2 the cost if ya dont mind ur hands looking funny for a while.

 

[TD55]

We got orange as well.

The black was tough. It is basically a 2 step process. Black over dark red. And cook the black really long and let sit overnight to soak in.

I have also dyed alot with Koolaid but it doesn't work really well on bucktails because of how coarse the hair is. You have to use so much koolaid that by the time you use that many packets it's just as cheap as Rit. And Koolaid will bleed a little bit. Koolaid does work really well on feathers and soft hairs. I used to dye alot of fox tails and coyote tails with it. Dylon and Rit work really well.

 

[PACOFRANSICO]

I counted my ornage shlappen feathers I'll know if ya shorted me!

 

[PACOFRANSICO]

We got some pink, fushia, chartruese, turquoise, and olive left to dye. And then 2 loads of Azabache!

 

[djmyers]

I saw blue was one of the colors. Do you find that to be a good color to use? If you have some patterns with them I would love to see some pictures of them.

 

[PACOFRANSICO]

That blue came from olive-tan of dahrma brand dye. Yeha everything it hit turned blue biots rabbit feet and the buckstails. its not a very good dye. But we did get a nice herron blue outta of it to our serprize. i think blue is gonna be good low clear water color for us. We didn fish to many toothy flies with predominate all blue. We will this yr.

 

[plombardo]

I know DM GURU... HE taught me a long time ago how to dye. I have done a couple of different things different time to time.

I would go as far as say it isn't Not good dye. You could have got bad color.

I used them all to dye. Rit, Dylon, Dhrama, tullip and Jaquard. They all work. The dharma brand acid dye, I brought to a boil and let sit up to 1/2 hr. at high temp. You can't do that with alot of furs The fur comes off the hide.

 

[guru]

To bad the Guru wasn’t ask to this Party!

 

[guru]

To bad the Guru wasn’t ask to this Party!

 

[PACOFRANSICO]

Hey Guru, I woulda loved to been there lastnigh.t I heard you watched the "Dyeing DVD".

 

[TD55]

Tell us your secrets Jedi knight