Dye for Cactus juice?

E

Eriksen

Joined
Sep 18, 2005
Messages
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is it really necessary to use their own expensive brand of dye in order to colour the juice, or will it be ok to add some colour powder and blend it into the juice?

Are there anybody her with experiences regarding this?
 
Cactus Juice dies give you pastel colors. I haven’t tried any other dyes with cactus juice.
 
I have a question as well regarding dyeing wood and stabilization. Is it possible to dye wood in a mixture of denatured alch or terpentine and dye and then after the alc evaporated stabilize the wood? Has anyone tried this?
 
Dye the wood first in an alcohol based dye ... then after drying have it stabilized, or use your cactus juice.

This way you control the color and aren't making a crap shoot about what the color will end up being. It also doesn't ruin the stabilizing agent e for other stabilizing.
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
Dye the wood first in an alcohol based dye ... then after drying have it stabilized, or use your cactus juice.

This way you control the color and aren't making a crap shoot about what the color will end up being. It also doesn't ruin the stabilizing agent e for other stabilizing.
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Will the dye soak into a block, or is this for scales mostly?
 
The dye will soak into the block (if alcohol or water based). Get the wood as dry as you possibly can before hand. Then let it sit for a couple weeks (or more) in the dye before drying
 
A pressure/vacuum pot will make it penetrate much better.

Put the blocks in a pressure pot filled halfway up with the dye solution and have a grate to hold them under the surface.
Pull a vacuum and bring it to a boil, being cautious to not suck the solution into your vacuum unit. Close the valve and leave the blocks under vacuum for a day. (re-draw the vacuum if it bleeds off).
Switch to pressure and leave for a couple days. Use as much pressure as your compressor will deliver. In industry, they use thousands of pounds. Obviously, this isn't safe for home equipment, but if the pot will take it 100-150PSI is good.
When the blocks have been pressurized for a few days, release the pressure and let the blocks drain well. Let dry for a week if you can. If you have a drying cabinet, put them in there. If in a rush, a GENTLE baking at 150F for a couple hours will speed dry the wood.
Once dried, they can be stabilized.
 
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If you add the colour to the wood before stabilizing with clean resin, you will fill the cracks or gaps with transparent resin and get a different result than you will get by adding colour to the resin first.
 
I am really interested in this. I can experiment with soaking only before I manage to finish my chamber. Also DIY dyes (food coloring, printer ink, eye shadow and similar).
 
FredyCro said:
I am really interested in this. I can experiment with soaking only before I manage to finish my chamber. Also DIY dyes (food coloring, printer ink, eye shadow and similar).
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I might get flamed for being too technical here, but ... if you do the “dye soak before stabilizing” approach, you really need to use either a water based dye or an alcohol based one (as stacy said). The reason is that the material in the wood is hydrophilic (water loving) ... it will soak up water based dyes, and those dyes will adhere to the inside pore surfaces (same with alcohol based dyes - as alcohol mixes with water - much to our enjoyment this time of year). An oil based dye is kind of like the epoxy resin . It will need to be “pushed” into the wood pores by pulling a vacuum and then applying pressure ... and also it will not adhere to the pore surfaces (and also water or alcohol will evaporate after soaking,and oil will not).

my thought of using food coloring is purely for experiment - if it is water based i would worry that in usage it would bleed from a dyed handle during usage...
 
My approach would be to use 95% denatured alcohol to dissolve what ever colorant I have and then drop the wood in it. After drying and stabilizing I would hope that the coloring would be sealed in between resin and wood. Obviously it is a non scientific approach and would be a trial and mistake procedure. My biggest worry would be that the color would bleed while stabilizing and color the resin and thus influence the other woods in the same chamber
 
What about mixing colour to the cactus juice by colour powder dissolved in alcohol? The small amount of alcohol which will be blended with the juice will evaporate in the heating process anyway, so maybe that will be an alternative to the brand name dye..
 
I would not add alcohol to the resin - it might affect the way it cures. If you do the denatured alcohol immersion approach - be VERY careful about fire. denatured alcohol is very flammable.
 
Just a comment, but if you want to dye wood .... use wood dye.
Food coloring, paint coloring, tempera paint, model paint, etc. are not resin or wood dyes.
 
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Lol ... there is actually a specific dye for wood? :-). (Just knd of kidding - i was too lazy this morning to do a search to see if such existed...)

again, my comment about food dye was just to facilitate an experiment on penetration ... it would lkely be a pretty bad choice to use as an actual working dye...
 
I use alumilite dyes. They're about $6 for a small bottle and go a loooooong way. I also use them for Alumilite casting resin.

I have glass pasta jars I use for a vacuum chamber from the dollar store. I have separate jars with dyed cactus juice in each. I have never tried alcohol but I don't see it being an issue. Wine country pens and Zac Higgens have a lot of great videos on double dying wood. If you dye cactus juice you don't want to run a vacuum or a very quick vacuum. Just use capillary action and the wood will pull the dye in. You also get way better results with spalted woods and burls.

 
Yes, it was a typo -
Food coloring, paint coloring, tempera paint, model paint, etc. are not resin or wood dyes.
 
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