If your feathers are old, dirty whites, wash and rinse them thoroughly.
If light colors, remove the same by passing through permanganate of
potash process, and use great care in rinsing to remove all the acid
before entering in bath. Prepare your bath with one gallon of luke warm
water and a small handful of starch; enter your feathers and rub them
around well in bath between the hands to expand the fibres. Take out
your feathers, and add to bath a small piece of copperas about the size
of a bean and about a quarter cupful of logwood liquor; re-enter your
feathers, and let them remain in bath a few minutes, meantime adding a
small quantity of hot water to increase temperature of bath; then add
a couple of drops of diluted safranine to bath, let remain in bath one
minute longer, squeeze out and dry as usual.
If wanted more on the shade of felt drab, use, instead of safranine, a
few drops of Bismarck brown; and if wanted more on the steel, use a few
drops of diluted violet in bath. If a darker shade should be desired,
use only a little more logwood liquor, and allow them to remain a short
time in bath.
Should you find your color to be altogether too dark for sample to be
matched, rinse off starch, and dilute a half teaspoonful of oxalic acid
in hot water; pass your feathers through, rinse off a couple of times
in luke warm water and lastly through boiling water, for the purpose of
removing all acid. Then prepare a fresh bath according to recipe, and
pass through until you have obtained the desired shade.