Dyeing Cactus Juice and vacuum questions

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TattooedTurner

TattooedTurner

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Has anybody dyed Cactus Juice with Castin' Craft opaque dyes? Alumilite dyes work but the colors I want to use are Castin' Craft. I've used the opaque dyes in Alumilite resin with great results but I don't want to botch this one up. Also, when stabilizing, do you turn the vacuum off when it reaches 28-29 or do you leave it run the whole time? It seems to me if the chamber is holding vacuum then running the pump would cause a lot of unnecessary wear and tear on it. Am I missing something?
 
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With out the pump running your not evacuating air.it's not good for your pump to turn it off under vacuum.
 
Jay, opaque dye is kind of an oxymoron. When I looked, the bottles of that brand said pigment.

There is true color that cannot be filtered, and apparent color that can be filtered. Pigment is an apparent color.

The question is how much of the pigment will be filtered by the wood, and also how much the pigment will retard the cactus juice penetration.

Try it but expect that penetration of color will be less than uniform. There may be spots where juice may not make it all the way.

Preturning and predrilling the blank well may increase the uniformity.
 
I picked up some powdered analine dye, as an alternative when I looked into this a few months back. I've not tried it yet, but it's supposed to work.

I mistakenly tried some glow in the dark Alumilite dye and that didn't work.

Post back your successes and failures...
 
budnder said:
I picked up some powdered analine dye, as an alternative when I looked into this a few months back. I've not tried it yet, but it's supposed to work.

I mistakenly tried some glow in the dark Alumilite dye and that didn't work.

Post back your successes and failures...
Click to expand...
Analine dyes work fine
 
Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm not dyeing penblanks though, I'll be cutting some sweet gum pods in half to cast in resin. I was thinking they would look pretty cool with some color added, and partial saturation may even look better. Much thanks to Steve Axelrod for sending me the pods, I've never seen them out here and it saved me from buying a box on ebay. Thanks for the tip on aniline dyes too, I have several jars that don't get used much.
 
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