I. For this color naturally gray or semi-bleached feathers may be
used. It requires a mordant, like wool. For this purpose prepare a
bath of forty per cent. (of the weight of feathers) tannin at 167°
F., enter the feathers and agitate them from time to time for three
hours. Then take them up, drain and squeeze them out, enter a cold
bath of pyrolignite of iron (black liquor) marking 5° B., and work
them for half hour; take them out, drain and squeeze, and then expose
them, well spread out upon the strings, for one hour to the action of
the air. Then rinse and dye upon a fresh warm bath with a mixture of
aniline blue and a little methyl violet, using about twenty per cent.
of the weight of feathers. Add the dyestuff in the beginning only in
small doses and slowly in order to prevent the production of a bronzy,
undesirable lustre upon the stem, as is often the case in dying with
aniline dyestuffs if they are added to the bath in too large doses.
II. Prepare a hot bath, to which add as much indigo carmine as to bring
the color of the bath pretty near the shade to be produced. Enter
the feathers and agitate them in the bath for one hour. Then take up
the feathers, add alum and a solution of cloth-blue S. to the bath,
re-enter the feathers and work them while raising the temperature to
boiling point, when the steam or gas is turned off, or the pan removed
from the fire, and the feathers allowed to lie for fifteen or twenty
minutes longer in the bath. They are then taken out, rinsed, starched
and dried and beaten.
III. Have the feathers properly cleaned and well rinsed from the soap,
respectively soda. Gray feathers may be used unbleached, but a purer
color is obtained upon them when bleached. Prepare a hot bath, to which
so much sulphuric acid is added, that it has a feeble sour taste;
add the solution of two per cent. (of the weight of feathers), navy
blue, one per cent. fast blue or black, and one-eighth per cent. acid
fuchsine. Stir well, enter the feathers, manipulate while raising the
temperature to boiling point, but not to actual boiling, continue at
this temperature for one half hour; then stop off the steam, lay the
feathers down in the bath until cool, lift and dry as usual.