I said in an earlier thread that a mate had given me some capes in with a load of fly tying stuff he'd had for about 40years in his loft, I went in to look properly and turns out there was 17!! 3 were ginger cock and in good nick, the rest were all natural coloured and in need of some tlc so
I decided to dye them.
This is them at the start[attachimg=1]
I gave them all a soak and a wash in soap powder and rinsed in cold water, amazing the dirt that came off them, then got the worst of the water off them. Prepared the dye baths. Used veniard dye and added vinegar to set the dye, really simple. After that just a case of putting the capes in and giving a low simmer for 10-15 mins. Did most of them in black, 4 in fiery brown and one natural black one in claret. Rinsed them off and squeezed excess water off, then just a case off blow drying with a hair dryer, not much of a job but when you've got 14 to do it becomes a bit of a task! Anyway this is them after
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Really works well, especially with capes and amazing how much it transforms them, I thought these would still be quite shabby but they look like fresh new capes, shiny and uniform. Really easy. Give it a go, especially if you have capes you never use or don't like the colour of, the black works great and I really like the colour of the fiery brown, nice deep reddy brown. Wee close up to finish, andy
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That looks like a job well done. :D
I think this should be saved as one of the sticky threads :D
Nice job. I see four capes though that I wouldn't have died. I have similar ones in my box that are used all the time, when I actually tye flies that is :)
I was actually thinking about you when I was doing it sandy, I know all your tying gear is about this age! It brings them up great, bit like when a woman gets her hair dyed, Changes the colour but also brightens it and brings a great shine.
Most important thing is it's really really simple, give it a bash!!
If I can I prefer natural capes rather than dyed ones. I find the dyed ones tend to get brittle after a while, the skin cracks and disintegrates and the hackles break easily. I have an Iron Blue dyed Chinese cape like that which I use for tails but for the hackle I have a natural Iron Blue Indian cape which has a subtle olive tinge to it that you don't get with dyed capes.
If you can get them it's great sandy but the expense of decent capes is a bit ridiculous and I've never found a natural black that's as good as a dyed one. This was really just to show that you can make something usable out of tired old capes and like andy says it's a lot easier than is made out sometimes, If you can make a pasta n sauce you can do this!
How much does the dye cost Andy and how many capes will one packet dye?
It's about a fiver Fred depending on where you buy it, I paid £5.50. I did the ten black capes and used about a third of it but I did it in a soup pot and also over measured just to make sure ;) if you follow the instructions you should use a 1/4 of a teaspoon per litre, there's about 5 teaspoons in a pack, if you wanted to you could really spin it out.
You can't get a decent black natural cape because there is no such colour in nature. What we see as black is actually a very dark brown :)
To get real black you have to get pigment and dye the article black and even then it has to be on a pure white surface or it still isn't 'pure' black because the underlying colour still shows through.
I have never bought an expensive cape in all the years I have been tying. I don't think I have paid more than £5 for any of them and most were only two or three pounds. The last lot I got from ebay were £10 for six I think :)
I do have dyed capes but they are seldom, if ever, used so dying more would just be a waste of time and good capes :)
Quote from: Fishtales on November 13, 2014, 10:42:52 AM
You can't get a decent black natural cape because there is no such colour in nature
Hempel's Ravens? :8)
Raven's aren't black though, they are a very dark blue :)
Yip, you want to get the water just below a boil, basically letting it stew until the dye sets
Just a wee update on this, got given some pheasant bits and bobs by an old fella I know that shoots, haven't sorted through it all except the tails, the ones I got were pretty pale so thought I would dye some and keep some natural. Did some fiery brown and some black. Same as before but this time at the end chucked them in the tumble drier (just on their own mind!) gave them ten minutes and they came out great, the hair drier takes ages and seperates all the fibres on the tail so it looks like a bit of a dogs dinner, they came out of the drier on their natural shape. A wee picture of the colours, come out nice and shiny
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Andy,
Did you use the venaird dyes? I am going to dye a cape dark fiery brown
Yeah veniard fiery brown, comes out well
This thread has reminded I purchased a few veniard dyes a while ago but still havent got round to using them. Might remedy that soon. There's a great vid on McPhails Youtube about dying capes.
I'll give that a watch, wee davie fix!
I watched him tie a goats toe the other day just to see if he did it any different, nope, good anyway
Bought 3 capes from eBay £3.40 delivered, not sure about their origin and it's possible the guy cut them off the hens himself!
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Planned to do 2 (a white and a brown) blue and the other one claret.
The white one dyed well and is pretty uniform and ideal for a teal blue and silver, the brown one didn't take the dye well at all and looked patchy and almost green. The same happened with some pheasant tails I did at the same time.
The opposite seems to be true of claret, I've found it works best on a natural brown feather and dyed the brown cape nicely and looked really good over a natural pheasant tail. When I've dyed white feathers before it leaves it a bit pinky and light.
Fiery brown and black seem to work well on pretty much anything I've tried, but they are stronger colours .
As the second cape hadn't taken the blue well I thought bugger it and threw it in the pot with the left over claret dye, nothing to lose really and it actually came out a pretty nice dark claret, although it's not completely uniform I'm sure it'll come in handy , hope this helps anyone who's thinking of having a go, I'll attack a pic of the finished capes to give an idea, the colours haven't photographed totally true .
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Wash the feathers well with warm soapy water, that helps prevent the blotchy uptake of the dye. They all look nice but I really like the clarets, the dark one looks like what I have seen called chocolate claret. :D
**Edit Synthrapol is also helpful with blotchy issues.
http://www.dharmatrading.com/chemicals/synthrapol-detergent.html (http://www.dharmatrading.com/chemicals/synthrapol-detergent.html)
It was a bit of an accident but is probably the colour I like best :D
I wash everything in warm water with washing powder, the capes I think had just been done by a farmer and the pheasant tails were from a guy I know who shoots , the dirt of just a few feathers is amazing, I let them soak for a bit as well and then rinsed with cold water.
Bought two cheap badger capes. Dyed one an olivey yellow and the other flouro orange.
I'll use these for kates and dabblers.
Also going to start to fill a new fly box for boat fishing. Need to bet tying.
Cheers
Paul
They look magic Paul, im always scanning eBay for a bargain cape. Got a cracking cream one last week and dyed it with a mix of sunburst and fiery brown, came up nice ginger for soldier palmers.
Looks good. It's becoming a bit of an obsession with me. Trying to get a good golden olive and a nice bright orangey red game is difficult. What colour of sunburst do you use. Orange or yellow.
Likewise with eBay. I've started buying them and then halving them.
Cheers
Paul
Yellow sunburst Paul, really wanted a proper claret cape, the dyes and the ones you buy are very purple and the veniard dye can even be quite pinky. Bought a blue dun hen cape ( not a cheap one ) and combined claret dye with some fiery brown which is quite reddish in colour, started with the purple claret in the pan and added to the brown til it looked about the right colour, came out really well and more of a true claret. Quite addictive this! Will tie a fly in the morning
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For a brilliant claret try flouro orange and fiery brown....
Not slot of orange is needed. Try it with seals fur first. The best claret I've ever had .
I'll give that a bash at some point Paul, don't have the orange colour yet. Wee fly with the cape from yesterday, like that it's not purple but a proper winey colour
good efforts, id be happy with that claret, and your right it does make a nice fly!!
I had the dye pot out today with veniards kingfisher blue, half capes, and some deer-hair, as has been said it's not rocket science ,a wee line I always remember is "a feather boiled is a feather spoiled" reminds me to keep the heat in check..apart from that its straight forward enough..
standing on the shoulders of giants here, as usual, plenty internet sites with great info ... if I'm doing capes and skins I paint a 50/50 mix of glycerin and surgical spirit to keep it supple and not dry out as much..flys to follow ..
Good hint with the glycerin and surgical spirit, capes do end up a bit brittle after you've cooked em!!ill give that a try next time. That blue dye is excellent much better than any ready dyed colours you can buy, same with the hot orange for salmon flies and dunkelds/doobries etc
aye the blue is nice, straight red is ok too, and the olives in med,golden are handy, its suck it and see for me as i don't do enough dying to repeat most things.
more tales from the dye pot..golden pheasant rump and breast feathers in veniards claret,red,sunburst and golden olive,and a wee batch of bronze mallard too.
All look good, like that red. I tried dying grey mallard but found it didn't take the dye well and ended up more of a tint than anything else. Assumed it was because of the natural waterproof on it? Yours has come out well
aye,never really put any thought into that..other than i picked out the less well bronzed ones,you know the pale ones you dont use for dabblers..
Thought I'd give this dying lark a shot, thought it would be more involved than it was.
Before:
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And after:
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One chartreuse and one golden yellow. Quietly pleased with the results.
Look great Robbie. I really need to have a go a to this too.
Cheers Alan, I even managed not to make a mess. Only complaint was the smell. My hands aren't even green or yellow.
However I fear this could be as adictive as tying muddlers, but I know who to blame :lol:
yep we know who to blame! My concern is the possible mess however it could bring back to life some old capes!
You've done well I'm forever staining my fingers Claret and hot orange :lol: golden olive looks really good!
well done robbie, great looking capes, in handy shades too.
Bought some dye a while back but appear to have lost it so off I went to GAC yesterday to get some. Got a tub of dark claret. Now need to get two old pots, bottle of vinigar and latex gloves. Have I missed anything?
I washed the capes using Venpol detergent before dying. Some newspaper was handy to protect kitchen work tops.
for capes i use jonsons baby shampoo,its amazing how much grease you will take out..if you dont wash your capes the natural waterproofness..is that a word?? will repel the dye..wash'n'go..
small batch dying today, some peacock eyes(flu yellow),G.P.crests (flu yellow and golden yellow), a half cock grizzle cape(red) and some peacock herl(black). used acetic acid glacial for the first time, extra thick rubber gloves and plenty ventilation is needed, the dark colors really took well,I'm happy with the results.
They look great!, what do you use the acetic acid for?
a fixing agent, you can use distilled white vinegar as I have done in the past, I got better results with the glacial which is essentially vinegar concentrate...
Magic stuff Pedro! Very vivid colours, the gp is particularly nice. Is acetic glacial a different type of dying?
na nothing different mate, just need a wee bit, its so neat... seems to bring a richer color
dabbling about in the dyepot this morning, chartreuse bronze mallard for funky wets/trads
That looks very nice!
Nice! You're making me jealous with the flies and dying. Done neither for a couple of months now and looks a distant hope at the moment. Getting work done on the house so I'm free come the new season!
The joys of moving house, hope the works going well!
Getting through it Robbie, all good, actually enjoying it :shock:
andy, i wondered where you were, better do it now and enjoy the fishing time. just messing about here cause ive bugger all else better to do hahah
mixed dye job today on some half capes,loose hackles,deer hair and even some marabou, intense fresh colors in flu yellow,hulk green and amber..
Marabou comes out well pete, that amber looks like it could be really useful. Would mix well with hotter oranges or with browns
sorry andy don't know how I missed this one, ach yea its a shade rather than a colour, i had a batch of amber on for other things and chucked in some bleached white marabou, like you say it,ll be good to mix up.
After a couple of texts from Robbie thought I'd have a go at dying some French partridge sunburst for mayflies. Thought I had a whole bag, turns out I only had ten feathers :roll: did half and left the rest natural. Bit of a waste of a dye bath so did some seals fur as well. One started a mix of all sorts with grey olive yellow and even a hint of orange. I'd mixed it to try and make a cow sing colour but it wasn't what I wanted so threw that in with a lump of standard olive seals fur sub. Pictures below. All dyed well, the mixed seals fur cane out really well and was pretty much the cow dung colour I'd wanted a while back :lol: and the olive went a kind of rich yellowy brown, it's not as brown as it appears in the picture. Robbie I reckon iron blue dun dyed sunburst would give the woigo colour you fancy........I might have a go and let you know. I'll post up the mayflies when I get round to tying them [attachimg=1]
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The mixed seals fur looks really nice Andy, as do the feathers. Going to have to get me some sunburst dye.
Doing the blue sun stuff just now but I put a tiny bit of fiery brown in and think it's taken over....more brown seals fur coming up! The sunburst on white makes a very bright sunburst but on brown feathers it gives a very nice golden olive colour.
The blue dun seals fur just sooked up all the brown :roll: anyways hot this blue dun cape off eBay.....to sunburst or not to sunburst that is the question!!
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How did the brown dun seals fur come out? Hopefully its still a useful colour.
That's a great price for a Metz cape, would it be worth cutting it in half or trying a few loose feathers first?
Out of interest are you using those halckes for palmering, head hackles or both?
It came out fine Robbie but just took in all the brown pigment so came out a dark brown, it's in the subbing box so will get used for something.
That's a good shout will probably half it and keep some original, could be a handy colour to have. I just watched it on eBay and put in a last minute bid (5secs to go!) have to play the long game a bit but you can get bargains. And yeah I'll use them for both, these good quality hen are somewhere one between a cock/hen so make excellent body hackle. Stiff stem means they Palmer well but the slightly softer feather means they sweep back a bit better and have a bit more movement
Just bit the bullet and dyed the whole thing, in truth it wasn't the best Metz hen cape I've had but suppose that's the chance you take on fleabay. Dyed it with just straight sunburst dye, came out pretty well, some variation but it was a natural dun cape so to be expected, the colour was a rich golden olive and so reckon you could class it as the hyper fashionable woigo! Knocked out a quick Zulu before work to see how it was on a fly.
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that looks nice andy,mibby on a jazzed up katie var too.
Yeah totally, Stan headly recommends a Zulu with the woigo muddled head, thought I'd give it a go with the head hackle. It's probably just another handy colour to have to try In the box. It's one of those that'll show up well in the water
Lunchtime visit to Sommers in Aberdeen resulted in not gettin what I was looking for but picking up some sunburst dye and some epoxy eyes.
Had a golden pheasant crest that had been left on a windowsill and also wanted to try dying some roe deer. Before:
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Dyed the golden pheasant hot orange and used a mix of sunburst, hot orange and fiery brown on the deer hair:
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Reasonably happy with how they came out. Might leave out the fiery brown next time though.
what a transformation. I've gotta get me some of that dye stuff ! :8)
Nice one robbie, I found like you have that the brown dye takes over when added to lighter colours. the lighter colour dyes onto brown hair/feathers just adds a new tone....hope that makes sense!
good effort robbie, nowt wrong with brown deer hair,will come in handy, its part of the fun of home dying.
I see there is an article on the basics on the March T and S. Suggests Irish Fly Supplies as a good sourse of dyes and capes and aslo a firm called Artvango.
I ordered the dyes recommended in that article from Irish Fly Supplies. Article was interesting as the dying was done in a jug. Not sure that the method described would work too well for darker materials or deer hair. I have found it takes a while for deer hair to take up the dye and reach desired colour.
Currently trying to find out about using picric acid. Some online sources say it is too risky and others say the risks are exasperated. Spoke to a couple of people at the fly fair and was advised to avoid it. Waiting to hear back from a chemist friend for some, hopefully, more informed advice. Has anyone else tried / used picric acid? can you get same effect using yellow or sunburst dye?
Irish fly supplies does a picric substitute. had stuff from him that has been done with it looks good to my eye
Garry
i use picric dyed stuff all the time, hare, j.c, bronze mallard, peacock eyes, i wouldn't dream of doing it myself when there is other folk happy to do it for me.
not been near the dye pot for a while but after getting some synthetic picric dye from irishflysupplys, i dug out a few genetic capes id bought from cookshill just for the job,one a light greenwells and the other a cree. while the pot was out I did a batch of mallard some P.T. and a wee j.c cape that was looking a bit washed out. I've used this to tie some picric dabblers.
That looks terrific !!!
Lovely colour Pete, another nice one to have in the box. Did you find lots of splits in the jc cape after you dyed it?
for the first bash with new dye I'm happy too, to be honest, the cape wasn't the best to start with, i just do the same as always ,bring the water to the boil then cut the gas,add dye and acetic along with feathers then just let everything steep for as long as you dare..
About the same Pete but I keep the gas at a peep to keep it hot, maybe best to cut it when I do Jc in future. I got lots of splits when I did it but tbh I tie with splits 99% of the time anyway, prefer them for wets. Only really use full eyes on salmon flies and I don't tie many. Like the look of that dye, I'll give it a try when I get back to tying.
nice one andy, its strong stuff, £4.99 for a batch, seems great value.
Dyed up some deer hair, kingfisher blue and dark blue. The kingfisher blue didn't really take to the tips of the hair, even a good long soak in the dye bath.
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that's usable Robbie,I've only dyed blue deer hair over bleached white.it looked ok..