Question about dying with Cactus Juice

Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
BeeAMaker

BeeAMaker

Member
Joined
Jan 30, 2017
Messages
695
Location
Elkhart IN, USA
I'm experimenting with using dyes in CJ to create multicolored blanks. Like this one I did a few months ago.
bt1b.jpg


The one pictured I simply placed the blank into yellow dyed CJ and let is soak up the yellow CJ, then placed it in Purple dyed CJ and placed it under VAC for 24 hours.

Surprisingly it didn't VAC all the yellow dye out and replace it with Purple, and it didn't seem to mix. What I am wondering is if I just got lucky, or can I expect this result each time?

Should I soak it in one color first, then cure it before VAC in another color to ensure they don't mix? Is there info some place on doing multicolored CJ blanks? How would you go about doing this?

Thanks
 
Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
BeeAMaker said:
I'm experimenting with using dyes in CJ to create multicolored blanks. Like this one I did a few months ago.
bt1b.jpg


The one pictured I simply placed the blank into yellow dyed CJ and let is soak up the yellow CJ, then placed it in Purple dyed CJ and placed it under VAC for 24 hours.

Surprisingly it didn't VAC all the yellow dye out and replace it with Purple, and it didn't seem to mix. What I am wondering is if I just got lucky, or can I expect this result each time?

Should I soak it in one color first, then cure it before VAC in another color to ensure they don't mix? Is there info some place on doing multicolored CJ blanks? How would you go about doing this?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Personally I always cure between colours
1ad6589c91101ff3ad4a34825864381f.jpg
74d5ea2cebe3d1a4813e9c0c043ce9c1.jpg
934e4889aabe08cba684bc05ebc56e5d.jpg
fd7bf91a8929ff3fb5be44af6afda316.jpg


Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

www.mrblanks.co.uk
www.facebook.com/mrresinblanks
 
Cool looking blanks guys, thanks for sharing your experiences. Gonna be getting come CJ soon, so dying and double dying hopefully won't be in the too distant future.
 
My main concern is to make sure I get CJ saturated throughout the piece. Will curing the first soak impede this process?
 
Last edited:
BeeAMaker said:
My main concern is to make sure I get CJ saturated throughout the piece. Will curing the first soak impede this process?
Click to expand...

No and yes, it depends considerably on the type of wood you are working with, if you soaked the full blank and pulled the vacuum and then cure it, any other colours won't penetrate.

There are various ways to multicolour blanks while stabilising, again, the wood used will determine what method will work better, any soft or panky woods are the easiest to work with, some medium woods work better than others and very dense woods, you won't get any colour through them.

Drip system on softwoods is in my view the best method to introduce various colours into a piece of wood, the results can be spectacular, such as these blanks,

006.JPG007.JPG008.JPG

Good luck...!

Cheers
George
 
Thanks George! good info, love the 3rd blank.

I'm only pulling the VAC on the second color. I have 2 test pieces. the first I am soaking the first color, then curing, pulling the VAC on the second, then cure again. The second piece I am going to soak then pull VAC on the second before curing the first. I want to see what different effects I might get.

It will probably be a few weeks, but I will post my results here.
 
robutacion said:
BeeAMaker said:
My main concern is to make sure I get CJ saturated throughout the piece. Will curing the first soak impede this process?
Click to expand...

No and yes, it depends considerably on the type of wood you are working with, if you soaked the full blank and pulled the vacuum and then cure it, any other colours won't penetrate.

There are various ways to multicolour blanks while stabilising, again, the wood used will determine what method will work better, any soft or panky woods are the easiest to work with, some medium woods work better than others and very dense woods, you won't get any colour through them.

Drip system on softwoods is in my view the best method to introduce various colours into a piece of wood, the results can be spectacular, such as these blanks,

View attachment 171469View attachment 171468View attachment 171470

Good luck...!

Cheers
George
Click to expand...

What is the "drip system", George? Is it as the name implies just dripping died CJ onto different areas of a porous blank?
 
Curtis pointed out to me, one of the many things I was doing incorrectly.

1 - dont cook over 200, the juices will flow out.

2 - after vacuuming, let it soak in the juice twice as long as it was under vacuum.
 
OK<
These pics suck so bear with me lol.
The colors are washed out in these pics, but the color yellow and purple are the same on both logs. Funny how the purple is washed out on one and not the other and visa-versa.

Anyways,
The first log was soaked in Yellow 1/3rd of the way for 24 hours. Cured then submerged in purple and VAC then soak. After that cured again.
The second log was soaked in Yellow 1/3rd of the way for 24 hours, NOT cured but submerged in purple and VAC. Then cured.

I thought for sure the second log would come out looking sh*t brown because the remaining dye sure looked Sh*t brown. But to my surprise, it don't really look any different than the first.

Seem odd to me, but it appears the dyes won't mix once saturated in the wood. I know it is hard to tell in the pics (I should have shot them side by side but not able to now) they really don't look any different when held side by side.

Log1.jpg


Log2.jpg
 
Last edited:
Hummmmm curious.

The reason I can't re-take my pictures is because I have the second log back in the VAC using un-dyed CJ. IT still had some areas that didn't appear to get saturated so I decided to VAC it again with clear. My clear CJ now has a purple tint to it and when all the tiny little bubbles came to the surface, those were purple as well. Does uncured CJ brake down cured CJ? The log was in the oven at 200 for 2 hours, it should all have cured so why am I now getting purple tint?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom