Vegetable Dyes: Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the DyerMairet, Ethel
Science
Vegetable Dyes: Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer
Mairet, Ethel
Dye plants; Dyes and dyeing
(For 1 lb.) Enter in one bath 1 oz. Cutch, in another 1/2 oz. Chrome.
Enter cotton in cutch bath, boil 20 minutes, wring out, boil 10
minutes in chrome bath. Add 6 oz. fustic or 1 oz. flavin to cutch
bath, re-enter cotton. Repeat above until the required depth of colour
is reached, finish in cutch bath to obtain deepest shade, which may be
darkened by adding 1 drachm or so copper sulphate. A greyish drab may
be got by adding ferrous sulphate. All shades of brown may be obtained
by decreasing or increasing the amount of cutch or by adding a little
logwood or fustic, in which latter case the cotton should have been
previously mordanted.
(9) BLACK
(For 1 lb.) Wash, steep overnight in hot solution of tannic acid, 1
oz., wring out without washing, work for 10 minutes in soda bath, at a
temperature of 50 deg. to 60 deg.C., 1-1/4 oz. Wring out, work in cold
solution of copperas, 1-1/4 oz., for 1/2 hour, return to soda bath for
1/4 hour. Wash, dye in bath of logwood 12 oz., madder 2-1/2 oz., and
fustic 8 oz. Enter into cold bath and raise gradually to boiling, boil
for 1/2 hour, pass through warm solution of chrome, 1 oz., wash, work
through warm soap bath.
Greys may be obtained with 1 to 5 per cent of logwood after mordanting
in a weak solution of iron.
THE ZINC-LIME INDIGO VAT
_The Zinc-lime Indigo Vat._ It will be necessary to explain these
words--Indigo blue is insoluble and cannot be used for dyeing. If
however it is "reduced" or changed to indigo white, it has, while it
is in this form, an affinity for vegetable and animal fibre. These
fibres will take it up from the solution and retain it. If they are
then exposed to the air, the oxygen acts upon the indigo in the fibre
and turns it back again to indigo blue. Various chemicals can be used
to reduce indigo blue to indigo white. I propose to describe how the
work is done with zinc dust and lime as reducing agents.
In course of time the word "vat" has been transferred from the dyeing
vessels themselves to their contents; _i.e._, the indigo dye liquor.
By "vat," therefore, we understand not only the vessel used for dyeing
indigo, but the solution of alkali salts of indigo white in water.
This definition distinguishes the _indigo vat_ completely from indigo
extract, or any other improper purposes to which indigo may be put.
The zinc lime indigo vat is better than any other for dyeing cotton
and linen. It is also very good for dyeing silk. It has many
advantages over the hydrosulphite vat, as it is not nearly so much
affected by changes of temperature and weather. It can be put to work
after a six months' rest.
The disadvantage which it shares with the copperas vat, though in a
less degree, is that there is a sediment which must not touch the
stuff during the dyeing. This is avoided by hanging a net in the vat
after the sediment has settled, or by dipping the skeins on rods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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