Red, Crimson, And Pink Dyes:

Yellow, Orange, And Bronze Dyes:

II.—For 40 pounds of goods, use sugar of lead, 2 pounds, and boil 15 minutes. When a little cool, enter the goods, and dip for 2 hours, wring them out, make a fresh dye with bichromate of potash, 4 pounds; madder, 1 pound, and immerse until the desired color is secured. The shade may be varied by dipping in limewater.

Prussiate of copper gives a bronze or yellowish-brown color to silk. The piece well mordanted with blue vitriol may be passed through a solution of prussiate of potash.

Feather Dyes.

I.—Cut some white curd soap in small pieces, pour boiling water on them, and add a little pearlash. When the soap is quite dissolved, and the mixture cool enough for the hand to bear, plunge the feathers into it, and draw them through the hand till the dirt appears squeezed out of them; pass them through a clean lather with some blue in it; then rinse them in cold water with blue to give them a good color. Beat them against the hand to shake off the water, and dry by shaking them near a fire. When perfectly dry, coil each fiber separately with a blunt knife or ivory folder.

II.—Black.—Immerse for 2 or 3 days in a bath, at first hot, of logwood, 8 parts, and copperas or acetate of iron, 1 part.

III.—Blue.—Same as II, but with the indigo vat.

IV.—Brown.—By using any of the brown dyes for silk or woolen.

V.—Crimson.—A mordant of alum, followed by a hot bath of brazil wood, afterwards by a weak dye of cudbear.

VI.—Pink or Rose.—With safflower or lemon juice.

VII.—Plum.—With the red dye, followed by an alkaline bath.

VIII.—Red.—A mordant of alum, followed by a bath of brazil wood.

IX.—Yellow.—A mordant of alum, followed by a bath of turmeric or weld.

X.—Green.—Take of verdigris and verditer, of each 1 ounce; gum water, 1 pint; mix them well and dip the feathers, they having been first soaked in hot water, into the said mixture.

XI.—Purple.—Use lake and indigo.

XII.—Carnation.—Vermilion and smalt.

Dyes For Artificial Flowers.

The French employ velvet, fine cambric, and kid for the petals, and taffeta for the leaves. Very recently thin plates of bleached whalebone have been used for some portions of the artificial flowers.

Colors and Stains.—I.—Blue.—Indigo dissolved in oil of vitriol, and the acid partly neutralized with salt of tartar or whiting.

II.—Green.—A solution of distilled verdigris.

III.—Lilac.—Liquid archil.

IV.—Red.—Carmine dissolved in a solution of salt of tartar, or in spirits of hartshorn.

V.—Violet.—Liquid archil mixed with a little salt of tartar.

VI.—Yellow.—Tincture of turmeric. The colors are generally applied with the fingers.

Dyes For Furs:

I.—Brown.—Use tincture of logwood.

II.—Red.—Use ground brazil wood, ¹/₂ pound; water, 1 ¹/₂ quarts; cochineal, ¹/₂ ounce; boil the brazil wood in the water 1 hour; strain and add the cochineal; boil 15 minutes.

III.—Scarlet.—Boil ¹/₂ ounce saffron in ¹/₂ pint of water, and pass over the work before applying the red.

IV.—Blue.—Use logwood, 7 ounces; blue vitriol, 1 ounce; water, 22 ounces; boil.

V.—Purple.—Use logwood, 11 ounces; alum, 6 ounces; water, 29 ounces.

VI.—Green.—Use strong vinegar, 1 ¹/₂ pints; best verdigris, 2 ounces, ground fine; sap green, ¹/₄ ounce; mix all together and boil. {273}

Dyes For Hats.

The hats should be at first strongly galled by boiling a long time in a decoction of galls with a little logwood so that the dye may penetrate into their substance; after which a proper quantity of vitriol and decoction of logwood, with a little verdigris, are added, and the hats kept in this mixture for a considerable time. They are afterwards put into a fresh liquor of logwood, galls, vitriol, and verdigris, and, when the hats are costly, or of a hair which with difficulty takes the dye, the same process is repeated a third time. For obtaining the most perfect color, the hair or wool is dyed blue before it is formed into hats.

The ordinary bath for dyeing hats, employed by London manufacturers, consists, for 12 dozen, of 144 pounds of logwood; 12 pounds of green sulphate of iron or copperas; 7 ¹/₂ pounds verdigris. The logwood having been introduced into the copper and digested for some time, the copperas and verdigris are added in successive quantities, and in the above proportions, along with every successive 2 or 3 dozen of hats suspended upon the dripping machine. Each set of hats, after being exposed to the bath with occasional airings during 40 minutes, is taken off the pegs, and laid out upon the ground to be more completely blackened by the peroxydizement of the iron with the atmospheric oxygen. In 3 or 4 hours the dyeing is completed. When fully dyed, the hats are well washed in running water.

Straw hats or bonnets may be dyed black by boiling them 3 or 4 hours in a strong liquor of logwood, adding a little copperas occasionally. Let the bonnets remain in the liquor all night; then take out to dry in the air. If the black is not satisfactory, dye again after drying. Rub inside and out with a sponge moistened in fine oil; then block.

I.—Red Dye.—Boil ground brazil wood in a lye of potash, and boil your straw hats in it.

II.—Blue Dye.—Take a sufficient quantity of potash lye, 1 pound of litmus or lacmus, ground; make a decoction and then put in the straw, and boil it.

To Dye, Stiffen, and Bleach Felt Hats.

Felt hats are dyed by repeated immersion, drawing and dipping in a hot watery solution of logwood, 38 parts; green vitriol, 3 parts; verdigris, 2 parts; repeat the immersions and drawing with exposure to the air 13 or 14 times, or until the color suits, each step in the process lasting from 10 to 15 minutes. Aniline colors may be advantageously used instead of the above. For a stiffening, dissolve borax, 10 parts; carbonate of potash, 3 parts, in hot water; then add shellac, 50 parts, and boil until all is dissolved; apply with a sponge or a brush, or by immersing the hat when it is cold, and dip at once in very dilute sulphuric or acetic acid to neutralize the alkali and fix the shellac. Felt hats can be bleached by the use of sulphuric acid gas.

Liquid Dye Colors.

These colors, thickened with a little gum, may be used as inks in writing, or as colors to tint maps, foils, artificial flowers, etc., or to paint on velvet:

I.—Blue.—Dilute Saxon blue or sulphate of indigo with water. If required for delicate work, neutralize with chalk.

II.—Purple.—Add a little alum to a strained decoction of logwood.

III.—Green.—Dissolve sap green in water and add a little alum.

IV.—Yellow.—Dissolve annatto in a weak lye of subcarbonate of soda or potash.

V.—Golden Color.—Steep French berries in hot water, strain, and add a little gum and alum.

VI.—Red.—Dissolve carmine in ammonia, or in weak carbonate of potash water, or infuse powdered cochineal in water, strain, and add a little gum in water.

Unclassified Dyers’ Recipes:

Dyes And Dyestuffs.

Prominent among natural dyestuffs is the coloring matter obtained from logwood and known as “hæmatein.” The color-forming substance (or chromogen), hæmatoxylin, exists in the logwood partly free and partly as a glucoside. When pure, hæmatoxylin forms nearly colorless crystals, but on oxidation, especially in the presence of an alkali, it is converted into the coloring matter hæmatein, which forms colored lakes with metallic bases, yielding violets, blues, and blacks with various mordants. Logwood comes into commerce in the form of logs, chips, and extracts. The chips are moistened with water and exposed in heaps so as to induce fermentation, alkalies and oxidizing agents being added to promote the “curing” or oxidation. When complete and the chips have assumed a deep reddish-brown color, the decoction is made which is employed in dyeing. The extract offers convenience in transportation, storage, and use. It is now usually made from logwood chips that have not been cured. The chips are treated in an extractor, pressure often being used. The extract is sometimes adulterated with chestnut, hemlock, and quercitron extracts, and with glucose or molasses.

Fustic is the heart-wood of certain species of trees indigenous to the West Indies and tropical South America. It is sold as chips and extract, yields a coloring principle which forms lemon-yellow lakes with alumina and is chiefly used in dyeing wool. Young fustic is the heart-wood of a sumac native to the shores of the Mediterranean, which yields an orange-colored lake with alumina and tin salts.

Cutch, or catechu, is obtained from the wood and pods of the Acacia catechu, and from the betel nut, both native in India. Cutch appears in commerce in dark-brown lumps, which form a dark-brown solution with water. It contains catechu-tannic acid, as tannin and catechin, and is extensively used in weighting black silks, as a mordant for certain basic coal-tar dyes, as a brown dye on cotton, and for calico printing.

Indigo, which is obtained from the glucoside indican existing in the indigo plant and in woad, is one of the oldest dyestuffs. It is obtained from the plant by a process of fermentation and oxidation. Indigo appears in commerce in dark-blue cubical cakes, varying very much in composition as they often contain indigo red and indigo brown, besides moisture, mineral matters, and glutinous substances. Consequently the color varies. Powdered indigo dissolves in concentrated fuming sulphuric acid, forming monosulphonic and disulphonic acids. On neutralizing these solutions with sodium carbonate and precipitating the indigo carmine with common salt there is obtained the indigo extract, soluble indigo, and indigo carmine of commerce. True indigo carmine is the sodium salt of the disulphonic acid, and when sold dry it is called “indigotine.”

One of the most important of the recent {275} achievements of chemistry is the synthetic production of indigo on a commercial scale.

Artificial dyestuffs assumed preponderating importance with the discovery of the lilac color mauve by Perkin in 1856, and fuchsine or magenta by Verguin in 1895, for with each succeeding year other colors have been discovered, until at the present time there are several thousand artificial organic dyes or colors on the market. Since the first of these were prepared from aniline or its derivatives the colors were known as “aniline dyes,” but as a large number are now prepared from other constituents of coal tar than aniline they are better called “coal-tar dyestuffs.” There are many schemes of classification. Benedikt-Knecht divides them into I, aniline or amine dyes; II, phenol dyes; III, azo dyes; IV, quinoline and acridine derivatives; V, anthracene dyes; and VI, artificial indigo.

Of the anthracene dyes, the alizarine is the most important, since this is the coloring principle of the madder. The synthesis of alizarine from anthracene was effected by Grabe and Liebermann in 1868. This discovery produced a complete revolution in calico printing, turkey-red dyeing, and in the manufacture of madder preparations. Madder finds to-day only a very limited application in the dyeing of wool.

In textile dyeing and printing, substances called mordants are largely used, either to fix or to develop the color on the fiber. Substances of mineral origin, such as salts of aluminum, chromium, iron, copper, antimony, and tin, principally, and many others to a less extent and of organic origin, like acetic, oxalic, citric, tartaric, and lactic acid, sulphonated oils, and tannins are employed as mordants.

Iron liquor, known as black liquor or pyrolignite of iron, is made by dissolving scrap iron in pyroligneous acid. It is used as a mordant in dyeing silks and cotton and in calico printing.

Red liquor is a solution of aluminum acetate in acetic acid, and is produced by acting on calcium or lead acetate solutions with aluminum sulphate or the double alums, the supernatant liquid forming the red liquor. The red liquor of the trade is often the sulpho-acetate of alumina resulting when the quantity of calcium or lead acetate is insufficient to completely decompose the aluminum salt. Ordinarily the solutions have a dark-brown color and a strong pyroligneous odor. It is called red liquor because it was first used in dyeing reds. It is employed as a mordant by the cotton dyer and largely by the printer.

Certain classes of aniline dyes may be properly said to form the materials. The essence of this color preparation consists chiefly in diluting or weakening the coal-tar dyes, made in the aniline factories, and bringing them down to a certain desired shade by the addition of certain chemicals suited to their varying characteristics, which, though weakening the color, act at the same time as the so-called mordants.

The anilines are divided with reference to their characteristic reactions into groups of basic, acid, moderately acid, as well as dyes that are insoluble in water.

In cases where combinations of one or more colors are needed, only dyes of similar reaction can be combined, that is, basic with basic, and acid with acid.

For the purpose of reducing the original intensity of the colors, and also as mordants, dextrin, Glauber’s salt, alum, or aluminum sulphate is pressed into service. Where Glauber’s salt is used, the neutral salt is exclusively employed, which can be had cheaply and in immense quantities in the chemical industry. Since it is customary to pack the color mixtures in two paper boxes, one stuck into the other, and moreover since certain coal-tar dyes are only used in large crystals, it is only reasonable that the mordants should be calcined and not put up in the shape of crystallized salts, particularly since these latter are prone to absorb the moisture from the air, and when thus wet likely to form a compact mass very difficult to dissolve. This inconvenience often occurs with the large crystals of fuchsine and methyl violet. Because these two colors are mostly used in combination with dextrin to color eggs, and since dextrin is also very hygroscopic, it is better in these individual cases to employ calcined Glauber’s salt. In the manufacture of egg colors the alkaline coloring coal-tar dyes are mostly used, and they are to be found in a great variety of shades.

Of the non-poisonous egg dyes, there are some ten or a dozen numbers, new red, carmine, scarlet, pink, violet, blue, yellow, orange, green, brown, black, heliotrope, etc., which when mixed will {276} enable the operator to form shades almost without number.

The manufacture of the egg dyes as carried on in the factory consists in a mechanical mixing of basic coal-tar dyestuffs, also some direct coloring benzidine dyestuffs, with dextrin in the ratio of about 1 part of aniline dye to 8 parts of dextrin; under certain circumstances, according to the concentrated state of the dyes, the reducing quantity of the dextrin may be greatly increased. As reducing agents for these colors insoluble substances may also be employed. A part also of the egg dyes are treated with the neutral sulphate; for instance, light brilliant green, because of its rubbing off, is made with dextrin and Glauber’s salt in the proportion of 1:3:3.

For the dyeing of eggs such color mixtures are preferably employed as contain along with the dye proper a fixing agent (dextrin) as well as a medium for the superficial mordanting of the eggshell. The colors will then be very brilliant.

Here are some recipes:

Very little of these mixtures suffices for dyeing five eggs. The coloring matter is dissolved in 600 parts by weight of boiling water, while the eggs to be dyed are boiled hard, whereupon they are placed in the dye solution until they seem sufficiently colored. The dyes should be put up in waxed paper.

The solution thus composed of these three salts is afterwards diluted at will, according to the color desired, constituting a range from a dark brown to a light olive green shade. The proportions of the three salts may be increased or diminished, in order to obtain shades more or less bister.

Cotton freed from its impurities by the usual methods, then fulled as ordinarily, is immersed in the bath. After a period, varying according to the results desired, the cotton, threads, or fabrics of cotton, are washed thoroughly and plunged, still wet, into an alkaline solution, of which the concentration ought never to be less than 14° Bé. This degree of concentration is necessary to take hold of the fiber when the cotton comes in contact with the alkaline bath, and by the contraction which takes place the oxides of chrome and of manganese remain fixed in the fibers.

This second operation is followed by washing in plenty of water, and then the cotton is dried in the open air. If the color is judged to be too pale, the threads or fabrics are immersed again in the initial bath, left the necessary time for obtaining the desired shade, and then {277} washed, but without passing them through an alkaline bath. This process furnishes a series of khaki colors, solid to light, to fulling and to chlorine.

Lakes:

Scarlet Lake.—In a vat holding 120 gallons provided with good agitating apparatus, dissolve 8 pounds potash alum in 10 gallons hot water and add 50 gallons cold water. Prepare a solution of 2 pounds ammonia soda and add slowly to the alum solution, stirring all the time. In a second vessel dissolve 5 pounds of brilliant scarlet aniline, by first making it into a paste with cold water and afterwards pouring boiling water over it; now let out steam into the vat until a temperature of 150° to 165° F. is obtained. Next dissolve 10 pounds barium chloride in 10 gallons hot water in a separate vessel, add this very slowly, stir at least 3 hours, keeping up temperature to the same figures. Fill up vat with cold water and leave the preparation for the night. Next morning the liquor (which should be of a bright red color) is drawn off, and cold water again added. Wash by decantation 3 times, filter, press gently, and make into pulp.

It is very important to precipitate the aluminum cold, and heat up before adding the dyestuff. The chemicals used for precipitating must be added very slowly and while constantly stirring. The quantity used for the three washings is required each time to be double the quantity originally used.

I.—Madder Lakes.—Prepare from the root 1 pound best madder, alum water (1 pound alum with 1 ¹/₂ gallons of water), saturated solution of carbonate of potash (³/₄ pound carbonate of potash to ¹/₂ gallon of water).

The madder root is inclosed in a linen bag of fine texture, and bruised with a pestle in a large mortar with 2 gallons of water (free from lime) added in small quantities at a time, until all the coloring matter is extracted. Make this liquor boil, and gradually pour into the boiling water solution. Add the carbonate of potash solution gradually, stirring all the time. Let the mixture stand for 12 hours and drop and dry as required.

II.—Garancine Process.—This is the method usually employed in preference to that from the root. Garancine is prepared by steeping madder root in sulphate of soda and washing.

Boil the garancine in 4 gallons of pure water; add the alum, and continue boiling from 1 to 2 hours. Allow the product to partially settle and filter through flannel before cooling. Add to the filtrate the chloride of tin, and sufficient of the potash or soda solution to precipitate the alum; filter through flannel and wash well. The first filtrate may be used for lake of an inferior quality, and the garancine originally employed may also be treated as above, when a lake slightly inferior to the first may be obtained.

Maroon Lake.—Take of a mixture made of:

Extract the color from the woods as for rose pink, and next boil the soda and alum together and add to the woods solution cold. This must be washed clean before adding to the wood liquor.

Carnation Lake.—

Should give specific gravity 1.310.

Boil the water with close steam, taking care that no iron touches it; add the cochineal and boil for not more than five minutes; then turn off the steam and add salts of tartar and afterwards carefully add the alum. If it should not rise, put on steam until it does, pass through a 120-mesh sieve into a settling vat, and let it stand for 48 hours (not for precipitation). Add gradually nitromuriate of tin until the test on blotting paper (given below) shows that the separation is complete. Draw off clear water after it has settled, and filter. To test, rub a little of the paste on blotting paper, then dry on steam chest or on the hand, and if on bending it cracks, too much tin has been used.

To Test the Color to See if it is Precipitating.—Put a drop of color on white blotting paper, and if the color spreads, it is not precipitating. If there is a {278} colorless ring around the spot of color it shows that precipitation is taking place; if the white ring is too strong, too much has been used.

Black Lakes For Wall-paper Manufacture:

Bluish-Black Lake.—Boil well 220 parts of Domingo logwood in 1,000 parts of water to which 2 parts of ammonia soda have been added; to the boiling logwood add next 25 parts of green vitriol and then 3.5 parts of sodium bichromate. The precipitated logwood lake is washed out well twice and then filtered.

Black Lake AI.—Logwood extract, Sanford, 120 parts; green vitriol, 30 parts; acetic acid, 7° Bé., 10 parts; sodium bichromate, 16 parts; powdered alum, 20 parts. The logwood extract is first dissolved in boiling water and brought to 25° Bé. by the addition of cold water. Then the remaining ingredients are added in rotation, the salts in substance, finely powdered, with constant stirring. After the precipitation, wash twice and filter.

Aniline Black Lake.—In the precipitating vat filled with 200 parts of cold water enter with constant stirring in the order mentioned the following solutions kept in readiness: Forty parts of alum dissolved in 800 parts of water; 10 parts of calcined soda dissolved in 100 parts of water; 30 parts of azo black dissolved in 1,500 parts of water; 0.6 parts of “brilliant green” dissolved in 100 parts of water; 0.24 parts of new fuchsine dissolved in 60 parts of water; 65 parts of barium chloride dissolved in 1,250 parts of water. Allow to settle for 24 hours, wash the lake three times and filter it.

English Pink.—

Put the bark into a tub, slake lime in another tub, and add the clear limewater to wash the bark; repeat this 3 times, letting the bark stand in each water 24 hours. Run liquor into the tub below and add the terra alba and whiting; wash well in the top tub and run into liquor below through a hair sieve, stirring well.

Dissolve the sugar of lead in warm water and pour gently into the tub, stirring all the time; then dissolve the alum and run in while stirring; press slightly, drop, and dry as required.

Dutch Pink.—

Put the bark into a tub with cold water, slake 28 pounds of lime, and add the limewater to the bark. (This draws all the color out of the wood.) Dissolve alum in water and run it into bark liquor. The alum solution must be just warm. Dissolve sugar of lead and add it to above, and afterwards add the terra alba and whiting. The product should now be in a pulp, and must be dropped and dried as required.

Boil the woods together in 4 waters and let the products stand until cold; wash in the whiting and terra alba through a hair sieve, and afterwards run in the alum. If a deep color is required slake 12 pounds lime and run it in at the last through a hair sieve. Let the alum be just warm or it will show in the pink.

Dyes, Colors, Etc., For Textile Goods: