Wash your feathers and rinse thoroughly. Prepare your bath of quarter
pound of turmeric and a half ounce of copperas diluted in a gallon
or more of boiling water. Enter your feathers and let them remain in
bath about two minutes; after which take out and rinse twice in cold
water. Meantime have a medium strong bath of logwood boiling, and
enter your feathers, letting them remain in about one minute, take out
and rinse. Then prepare a bath of about two ounces of turmeric and
a small pinch of aniline green in a gallon of boiling water. Enter
your feathers and allow them to remain in bath about three minutes or
longer. Take out and cool off a small quantity of bath with cold water;
add a small handful of starch, pass your feathers through and dry.
If your color be found too much on the green for your sample to be
matched, add to starch bath a few drops of sulphuric acid; or, instead,
rinse off starch and mix a bath of two ounces of turmeric in a gallon
of boiling water; pass your feathers through for a minute or so, starch
and dry.
If found to be too much on the yellow or olive, add to your bath a few
grains of aniline green, and return them to the same for a few seconds,
first rinsing off starch in cold water. If found too light, pass for
a few seconds through a weak bath of bichromate of potash; and if too
dark, dilute a few grains of oxalic acid in hot water, and add to your
starch bath a few drops. Pass your feathers through for a few seconds
and dry in the usual way.