http://www.aurorasilk.com/ Tutorial: How To Dye Black with Natural Dyes by Cheryl Kolander. Excerpted from TrueFibers. Aurora Silk sells a full selection of natural dyes and mordants. For ideas on which dyes and which mordants to use, view our Natural Dye colour Chart. For more detailed dyeing recipes, read Brilliant Colours! by Cheryl Kolander. After recording the dry weight of your fiber, wet the fiber out in warm or hot water. STEP I: TANNIN 2 oz. tannic acid per pound of fiber (dry weight) OR: 4 oz. tara sawdust per pound of fiber, extracted twice OR: 3 oz Catechu (Cutch) extract per pound of fiber with optional 1/2 oz copper mordant 1. Dissolve tannic acid or catechu extract in hot water. 2. Heat the solution to approximately 200 F. 3. Remove from heat. 4. Enter the silk (or other fiber) that has been thoroughly wet out in warm to hot water. 5. Set to soak for at least 24 hrs, stirring occasionally. STEP II: IRON 1/2 to 1 oz Ferrous Sulphate per pound of fiber Use the lesser amount for fine silk yarn and soft wools. Use the greater amount for wild silk and other fibers. 1. Dissolve the iron in warm water. 2. Soak fiber in a mild soap solution about 15 minutes to neutralize the acid in the tannin (which couters the effect of the iron). This step is not necessary if you used Catechu for STEP I. 3. Add fiber to warm iron solution and soak for about 20 minutes. 4. Remove fiber from iron solution, wring excess solution from fiber, and hang to air 20 minutes to 1 hour. 5. Save this iron bath for STEP IV. At this point, the colour should be a dark grey. If it is not a good dark grey, or if it is uneven, return to the iron solution. Add a bit more iron first and stir well to dissolve, then let the fiber soak again another 20 minutes. Don't forget to air the fiber afterwards to complete the oxidation process. STEP III: LOGWOOD - FUSTIC 12 oz. to 1 lb. of logwood shavings per pound of fiber 1/2 oz. fustic extract per pound of fiber 1. Extract logwood shavings three times. 2. Add fustic extract. This neutralizes the blue tone of the straight Logwood. 3. Submerge the fiber and heat to just below boiling point for at least two hours, up to all day or even all night. 4. Let fiber cool in the dyebath. 5. Save this "Black Liquor" to be used the next time you dye black. Just strain off any mold or slime that may form. STEP IV: IRON 1. Return fiber to room temperature iron bath. 2. Let soak overnight. 3. Hang to air overnight or until the material starts to dry. STEP V: RINSE OR REPEAT At this point, if you are happy with the depth of the colour, rinse the fiber until the rinse water is barely tinted by the dye, hang to dry and enjoy! If the fiber does not look completely black at this point, repeat steps III and IV until desired colour is acheived. TIP: If you have acidic water, try adding a bit of ammonia to the logwood dyebath to acheive a deeper black. Both the logwood dyebath and the iron bath can be saved and reused indefinitely. Assume about 25% of the dyes and mordants are still in the baths when calculating how much logwood, fustic, and iron to add for the next batch. LOGWOOD by Cheryl Kolander Aurora Silk © 2010 The Tree: The Logwood tree is one of the prettiest trees on the planet. The leaves are like lace. Each little leaflet is the shape of a small heart. Two rows, with their pointy ends attached to a flexible mid-rib, flutter in the breezes. The whole canopy is intersections of these lacy hearts. The trunk of the Logwood tree grows in a unique formation. It buttresses itself, like most tropical or very old trees do near their roots. The Logwood tree grows this buttress form all the way up the trunk. The older the tree, the more it looks like several trunks that have grown together. Though many trunks may grow from one root cluster, each trunk is individual, even when it looks like six or eight trunks packed tightly. A cross section looks like a flower with many open petals. In really old trees even the buttressing trunks have buttresses! The sap of the tree is very dark, richly maroon red and abundant. If the tree is wounded it oozes this sap to heal the wound. It looks like dried blood, thus the Latin name Haematozylon = “Bloody sap”. The Dye Stuff: It is the heartwood that is the dyestuff. When the tree is cut, the inner wood is a dark rust- red. This is the dyestuff. The outer softwood, or sapwood is a light beige. It contains no dye. The bark is usually thick and rough. Like all barks it contains brown tannins, but it is not the source of the rich purples and black that is the value of this dyestuff. For quality dyestuff, the tree or a large branch is cut. All the bark and all the sapwood must be removed. This is typically done by hand with a machete. Then the beautiful dark heartwood is rasped, shaved, planed or hammer-milled into a form suitable for dye extraction. The Logwood prepared for Aurora Silk is planed into shavings because I find that this is the most convenient form for maximum extraction. While a finer rasped sawdust will extract more in the first boil, the dust goes right thru a sieve, and fills the textile with annoying bits of wood. I have found this to be so important that I hand carried an electric power planer into the country as part of the Logwood Project. After shaving or rasping, the wood needs further attention to develop its dye power. As fresh raw heartwood, it is moist and ferment-able. This quality is exactly what makes Logwood such a potent medicine: it is actually a triple anti-oxidant when a tea is prepared from the wood at this stage. For the red medicinal Logwood tea, export quality, the shavings are quickly dried. On the other hand, to develop the finest dye quality, the still moist shavings are placed in a container and allowed to ferment. In the tropics, at 90 degrees even at night, fermentation is complete in a few days. In old books which describe the Logwood trade of the 1800's, the same fermentation could take up to a month in England. As the red heartwood ferments, the colour changes from red to maroon to deep reddish brown. The best dyewood is in the maroon to deep reddish brown stage. If the wood is over-fermented, the colours given will be greyish and aged looking even when just dyed. They will also turn grey brown, losing the desirable purple cast, much quicker than the rich and vibrant purples of properly aged wood. This is the crux of the problem of dyeing brilliant and fast purples with Logwood extract, a pre-prepared water soluble powder, used for histology staining. Such purples may be bright at first but I have had them turn grey-brown in under a year, with minimal exposure. By comparison I have my own Logwood-shavings dyed silks still vibrant rich purple after 40 years. To Dye with Logwood Logwood is a “Mordant Colour”, which means the textile material must be pre-mordanted, that is, prepared by soaking in a solution of some metal that has been dissolved in some acid. Today these are easily obtained as prepared crystals: either Alum (Potassium Aluminum Sulphate; Ammonium Aluminum Sulphate) or Tin (Stannous Chloride), for purples; or Iron (Ferrous Sulphate; rusty iron dissolved in vinegar; iron rich dirt) for greys. Copper (Copper Sulphate) can also be used to give bluer purples. The dyestuff itself are these maroon mottled wood shavings. Properly prepared, they will have very little contamination of pale sap-wood, dirt or bark. Be aware that someone else may cut down a tree, pushing it all into a chipper-grinder. Then you will see lots of pale pieces, shredded bark and even dirt and rocks at the bottom of the bag. Avoid this, and question the supplier. Remember also that some other dark coloured heartwood, such as ebony which is dark but contains only a little grey dye, could be mixed in. And with an extract pre-prepared, the chance for adulteration is regrettably high. Extract prepared for histology must be US Pharmaceutical certified honestly Logwood, but it's price is extremely high. Shavings or sawdust, the procedure is the same as for all Natural Dyes: soak the stuff in water till it is well wet, usually overnight for woody dyestuffs. You will get more dye out by this presoak, but if time is an issue, just: PUT THE LOGWOOD IN SOME WATER AND BOIL. After 20 minutes of boiling, strain off the dye liquid. Return the wood to the first pot, add more water and BOIL AGAIN After two boils almost all the dye is out of the shavings or sawdust. Combine the two waters, and LOOK AT THE COLOUR. This is really important: if your water is acid, the liquid will look orange-red. It needs to have added to it: Ammonia (liquid, from the grocery store) until it changes to a nice Concord Grape juice hue. If you are dyeing silk or wool, only use ammonia.