Hemlock tan bark

[DickB]

For a model boat's sail (about 1.5 yards of cloth), thought it would be interesting to cut it out of very light cotton and soak it in a tanning solution, just to see how this was once done. Scraped the bark off an east coast hemlock (it is spring time and the sap would be energetic?), boiled crumpled up reddish/brown bark in a pot of water for over an hour (smelled great!), strained the brown fluid to remove the bark, and boiled the sail material for an hour in the fluid and let it then soak overnight. Result? Sort of a "cafe latte" light brown. Wah! Wanted that deep rich reddish brown. Any suggestions before I go on a hunt for plastic bag material?

[NormMessinger]

I think you have to use cow dung and bury it on the beach.

Okay, so I don't know but there is some tiny spot in the synapsises that seems to have recorded something vaguely like that some where some time.

[Venchka]

Interesting that we were both trying the same experiment simultaneously.

I wanted to knock the white off of the line for my boat. The test case involved braided mystery line from my backpacking gear-probably nylon. Very white.

My recipe was:
12 family size Luzianne tea bags
A big wad of cypress bark mulch. Packed down, it half filled a gallon jug.
2 50' hanks of 3/16" braided line.
I also added a small scrap of cotton sheet as a control to see how the nylon took the color.
Water to cover everything in a 2 gallon pot-probably a gallon.
Boiled for a few minutes, simmered for a few minutes more. Total cooking time less than an hour.
Covered and let stand for a week.

I forgot: Wash in Dreft and air dry.

Results: The nylon line looks nice. Reddish brown tint but not overdone. The cotton was a failure-it took on a faint brown color (cafe au lait-too much milk) but lacked the reddish brown hue of the nylon. The color was uneven, maybe because it was wadded up.
The nylon line looks great, but the cotton doesn't look good.
I am currently soaking 3/16" 3-strand polyester and 1/8" braided Dacron.

[ 04-29-2003, 05:13 PM: Message edited by: Venchka ]

[John Gearing]

"The Sailmaker's Apprentice" has a section on tanbarking sails in their chapter on sail preservation, but I haven't a copy to refer to. Anyone else??

[NormMessinger]

Ah, so that's where I got the idea about Cow Dung though it looks as if Dog might be better. It's a tannin thing. Stand by, I'll scan the paragraphs.

[NormMessinger]

Well okay, it was not dung, but the tannin part I got right. Check yer email.

[Todd Bradshaw]

The Sailmaker's Apprentice lists several ingredients that can be used for barking sails, but has no specific recipes or instructions. None of my other books list any either, though I do remember seeing a photo essay on the process with specifics. It was probably on the web but I can't find it at the moment. It may have even been related to some discussion here on the forum. Personally, I find that Minwax Early American oil stain, rinsed well with naptha, does the job and doesn't come off on other stuff later. I've got a couple chunks of stained 3/16" 3-strand holding stuff up in the garden. They're going on their third or fourth year out in the weather and still look great.


Which got me wondering...so I took an unused coil of the line out to compare it to the stuff which has been out in the weather and gets about 50% sunlight on the top surface of a plant hanger thingy. It has faded a bit, but seems to be otherwise OK.


I haven't purposely tried it on cotton fabric yet, though it's impossible to remove if you get it on clothing while staining rope. I did try it on Dacron sailcloth and it did little more than make it look dirty.

[ 04-29-2003, 05:08 PM: Message edited by: Todd Bradshaw ]

[Venchka]

Todd,

I read your earlier post about the Minwax Stain-is that the color, Early American? I recall 4 minutes in the stain. The naptha rinse bothers me. How should it be handled? Assuming that the tea bags+cypress bark mulch don't work on the polyester and dacron as well as it did on the nylon, I will try the Minwax stain, naptha rinse and dunk the 1/8" dacron in the naptha rinse residue. Wash in Dreft. Which my wife keeps around for such occasions.

Also, do you feel that the natural dying tint will fade over time? Probably will, come to think of it.

Did all of that make sense?

MORE QUESTIONS FOR YOU TODD:

Assuming 100' of 3/16" 3-strand polyester and 100' of 1/8" braided dacron,

How much Minwax stain and how long for the 3/16" line?
How much naptha for rinsing and how long?
How long do I leave the 1/8" braided dacron in the naptha rinse?
What the heck do I do with the naptha when I'm done?

Thanks!

[ 04-29-2003, 05:18 PM: Message edited by: Venchka ]

[Todd Bradshaw]

I'd just buy a quart of stain and a gallon (about $7) of naptha. I'm still using the same can of stain that I bought several years ago as very little of it remains on the rope after you drain it off. I've probably stained 500-600 feet of 3/16 and 5/16" line and a couple of spools of 1/8" leech line (1000 ft.) and still have some left. Dunk time depends somewhat on the rope itself, so it's worth experimenting before trying a big chunk. Sometimes the neatest color is achieved with almost no rinsing, but you have to compromise a bit since more stain left on the surface makes the line stiffer. I usually do my best to rinse off enough to keep the line's handling characteristics as close to normal as possible.

This is the process that I use:
Naptha is fairly nasty stuff, like any paint thinner, so I do it outside. I coil the line into a coffee can, dump in strait stain, swirl it for a couple minutes, then dump the stain back into it's original can. Then I pour in enough naptha to cover the coil of line and swish it around a bit. After a minute or so I pour the naptha off and into a can labeled "dirty naptha", which I save. The coil in the coffee can gets another shot of clean naptha, swished around and drained off into the dirty can. Then I start at one end of the coil with a rag and gloves on. I pull it out, wiping it down with the rag as I go. Once it's all out of the can, I tie it up on the hedge along the side of my driveway and leave it to dry for a couple of days.

Small tightly woven line, like the 1/8" leech line that I use for lacing gets too stiff if you do the whole process, so it just gets dunked in the dirty naptha solution and hung out to dry. It won't go as dark as something like tarred marline, but does turn a pretty respectable tan color. Since the dirty stuff is mostly naptha, I can usualy leave line in it for quite a while without it getting stiff, though it doesn't seem to get much darker than it does with just a couple minutes of dunk time.

One thing that I haven't tried, but should, is doing the process with water-based stain, rinsed with water. It would certainly be less toxic. I've got some stain left over from refinishing my office floor and will give it a shot to see what happens. Without "garden testing" it though, it may be hard to tell how much it will fade in time.

[Venchka]

Thanks, Todd!

My offer still stands-I owe you a sail on my boat and a few cold "whatevers" to boot! If you ever get near the Gulf Coast, give me a shout. Oh, I forgot, after July when the boat will be finished and delivered. I hope.

I have time to wait if you think you might do the water based stain test in the next month or so. It's not me so much as my wife. She's really bad about nasty smelly stuff anywhere near her plants.

[Todd Bradshaw]

Probably shouldn't hang it on her hedges then....
Experiment completed.
Picture #1:
(Sorry about the glare, I had to shoot the pictures inside because it's a gray, crummy day here without any sunlight.)

On the right are two coils of New England Ropes Filament 3-strand Dacron, one 3/16" and one 5/16" which were stained with Early American oil stain. Thicker line will take more stain without getting overly stiff, which is why the 5/16" is darker. The small chunk of line in the upper left is the same 3/16" line stained with Minwax Colonial pine water-based stain, which is almost interchangable when used on oak with Early American oil stain. I swirled the rope well for about three minutes in the stain and as soon as the rinse water hit it, almost all of the stain washed off leaving a pretty ugly, dirty rope color. I suppose you could use it to dull bright white rope, but it's not much to look at.

The chunk spliced to the thimble and bench hook is New England Ropes nylon anchor line. It came out a bit better since nylon takes color better than Dacron (polyester) but it also looks a bit washed-out and isn't as rich as it would be with the oil stain. It's also still wet and will probably get a little lighter as it dries. The process is somewhat cleaner with water-based stain and a water rinse, but the results don't seem all that promising.

Photo #2:
These are all oil-based but show some of the other stain color possibilities that I experimented with.

The coil is the regular Early American. The dark, shroud part of the dead-eye set-up is walnut stain. I was hoping for a really dark, brownish black as a possible "tarred" look for boltroping tanbark sails. It's dark and kind of interesting, but doesn't really look tarred. Perhaps doing some stain mixing will improve it, but I haven't gotten around to trying it yet. The lanyard portion joining the dead eyes is "Lodgepole Pine" stain. It's a bit more gold in color than I'd like, but this was done before I figured out that dirty naptha made a pretty good light tan color all by itself. I've also tried multiple stainings on the same piece of rope, like Walnut for a dark shade, followed by Early American to add some brown to it. It seems that the second color doesn't do much at all and almost all of it washes off. Cherry stain was also pretty good. A bit redder than Early American, but I used it in the early days on a couple Egyptian Dacron sails and they came out nice.

I'd throw in a little real pine tar, but since I use most of this rope on sails I don't want anything on the rope that's liable to come off and stain a folded sail.

[Nicholas Carey]

traditional tanbark canvas was made with 'cutch' aka catechu -- from the heartwood of an acacia species found in the Indian subcontinent.

You should be able to obtain cutch/cutch extract from a supplier of natural dyes, as well as the mordant(s) you'll need.

Get a good book on natural dyes and dying. This one, from Dover, is good: Natural Dyes and Home Dyeing.

This one, The Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing: Traditional Recipes for Modern Use, from the University of Tennessee Press is also supposed to be good.

Good luck.

[ 04-29-2003, 07:26 PM: Message edited by: Nicholas Carey ]