Using old Drimarene K, Dylon Colourfast, and Dylon Permanent dyes
Using old Drimarene K, Dylon Colourfast, and Dylon Permanent dyes
Name: Helen
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Country or region: Fiji
Message: Hi Paula
Apologies in advance if my questions have already been covered, I'm a bit of a novice to the internet!
I live in Fiji and am currently unable to buy dyes over here. I have however been given some and am somewhat confused!
A friend has given me five tubs of Drimarene K which are about 20 years old! Have you ever used dyes this old?! I am loathe to waste them but am worried the colours may no longer be good.
I have also been given some discontinued Dylon Colourfast Dye in a box and a sachet of new Dylon Permanent Fabric Dye. The instructions for these two are the same only the box weighs 100g and the sachet weighs 50g but they are both for 250g of fabric. Have the manufacturers condensed the dye?
Lastly, when I finally take the plunge to dye my project, how long will the liquid dye last for. Because it is so hard to get, I thought I might keep it in a bottle in the fridge. Do you know what would happen if I used it a second time round?
Actually I am planning to dye some masi (Fijian bark cloth) which I have been told dyes beautifully (it's for a handbag). I am also wondering whether it would be ok just to paint the dye on so I only need to mix up a teaspoonful!
I know you are thinking "silly girl, just experiment" but, like I said, I only have very limited supplies at present.
I look forward to hearing from you! Many thanks and kind regards
Twenty-year-old Drimarene K dyes are probably hydrolyzed, but not necessarily. There is one Procion dye I've had stay good for eight years (though usually Procion MX dyes are good for no more than a couple of years after purchase), and Drimarene K dyes are a little less reactive than Procion MX dyes, so they last significantly longer. It's certainly worth a small test. Drimarene K dyes are fiber reactive dyes intended for use on cellulose fibers such as cotton and linen, though they can also be used on silk. Bark cloth is obviously a plant-based textile, which must contain both cellulose and lignen, which can be dyed with the same types of dye as cotton. For more information about Drimarene K dyes, see my page "About Fiber Reactive Dyes".
To test fiber reactive dyes for freshness, what you should do is get some dyeable cotton fabric, something small and cheap, that's been pre-washed. Cut the fabric up into swatches, perhaps three or six inches wide, whatever's small and convenient. Using zip-lock-type plastic freezer bags (not the storage bags which are too thin for use in storing frozen foods), place one piece of fabric in each bag. I like to use quart-sized bags for this (i.e., one-liter bags or smaller). Mix a small amount of each fiber reactive dye that you want to test with a small amount of water and pour it over a swatch of fabric in the bag. Also mix up some sodium carbonate, one teaspoon (5 ml) of soda ash per one cup (250 ml) of water, and pour some of this into each bag. Seal each bag, pressing out most of the air.
Do you have a microwave oven? If so, you can microwave the bags, all at once, inside a dish of some sort, watching closely until the bags puff up with steam; stop the microwave before they can explode. The bags will slump down as the steam condenses again. Repeat this if you want to be sure the dye's good and hot, then allow to cool at room temperature. If you do not have a microwave oven, then fill a bucket or a sink with hot water, at least 60°C (that's 140°F), or hotter, heating the water on the stove if necessary, then place the sealed bags into the hot water and leave them for an hour or so. The extra heat from the waterbath or the microwave oven speeds up the dye reactions, to make the test more practical, so you don't have to wait until the next day to get your results. Drimarene K dyes like extra warmth more than Procion MX dyes do, but I have used this test for Procion dyes many times.
After the bags have cooled, rinse the swatches out with cool water (a colander is handy to prevent small slips of fabric from going down the drain), then with the hottest water you have available, to see how much dye remains in the fabric after the hot water has removed as much as possible of the unattached, unbonded dye. You can place all of the swatches in a net lingerie bag to do this in the washing machine, or, for greatest efficiency, you can even pour boiling water over the fabric.
You may see that some of the dyes are completely hydrolyzed, meaning that they can no longer react with the cellulose in cotton. They are not entirely useless, though, especially in your circumstances of being unable to buy dye. Although hydrolyzed fiber reactive dyes can no longer be used as fiber reactive dyes, because they will no longer react, they can still serve as acid dyes. The color-bearing part of the dye molecule is in fact some sort of acid dye. You can use acid dyes on protein fibers such as wool or silk, as well as on the one synthetic fiber nylon. Don't try to use acid dyes on cotton or other plant fibers, nor on synthetics other than nylon. Nylon happens to chemically resemble the protein fibers enough that it can be dyed with most of the same dyes. To use Drimarene K dyes, or any other fiber reactive dye, as an acid dye for wool, silk, or nylon, you should follow a recipe that calls for an added acid, such as vinegar, and that calls for some form of added heat, such as simmering the fabric in the dye on the stovetop (using a stainless steel or enameled cooking pot that you don't plan to use again for food), or painting the dye on, letting it dry, wrapping it in paper, and then steaming it, much as you might steam a vegetable. For more information on using Drimarene K and other fiber reactive dyes as acid dyes, see my page, "Fiber reactive dyes on protein fibers".
Dylon Colourfast Dyes were a group of dyes that contained either vinyl sulfone (Remazol) type fiber reactive dyes or Drimarene K type fiber reactive dyes, along with sodium carbonate and salt. This means that my advice above holds true for testing. Unfortunately, the presence of sodium carbonate in the dye powder mixture may have caused it to go bad more quickly. Also unfortunate is that fact that the sodium carbonate in the dye mixture will directly oppose any acid that you add in order to try to use the dyes as acid dyes. You would have to add a very large amount of acid in order to first neutralize the sodium carbonate, and then to produce the acid conditions required for fixing acid dyes. I would recommend that you attempt to use this dye by following the package directions as closely as possible, but only on a cellulose fiber such as cotton or viscose rayon. You could also use it on silk, which, unlike wool, can survive the high-pH of the sodium carbonate, and unlike nylon, which does not like to dye under high-pH conditions at all. If the dye does not work, you can always set aside the project to overdye with another dye. You will probably get some color, but probably a lighter color than the box indicates, depending on how old the box is. There's always some hope that the dye will still be fresh enough to work.
Dylon Permanent Fabric Dye is a range of dyes that, like Dylon Colorfast Dyes, includes both Remazol type dyes and Drimarene K type dyes. I suspect that Dylon Colorfast Dye contained more of the non-dye ingredients, such as salt and soda ash. In fact, at least some of the Dylon Permanent dyes contain trisodium phosphate, a chemical that produces a higher pH than sodium carbonate does, so the weight needed of this dye fixative would be less. You can expect one packet of either dye mixture to contain a similar amount of the dye powder itself. Follow the instructions as closely as possible.
Pure Drimarene or Remazol dyes are very suitable for painting. Dye painting with Dylon dyes is more difficult, because they are not designed for this purpose and have been mixed with chemicals in advance that assume that you are going to follow the instructions exactly. If you mix the dye powder with less water than is recommended, than the auxiliary chemicals in the mixture will create a higher pH than is desirable, resulting in less even colors. Dylon dyes are not really designed for use by artists, being premixed into whatever colors the manufacturers deem fashionable. You cannot buy a single dye, unmixed with other dye colors, in the Dylon line, in order to use as a mixing primary to mix your own dye colors. You can, of course, mix Dylon dyes to make different colors; however, the colors are harder to mix, and the results may be duller in color, than if you started with single-hue unmixed dyes as your mixing primaries. It is still worth trying, when that's the only dye that you can obtain.
Drimarane K dyes and Remazol (vinyl sulfone) dyes will stay good in water solution much longer than Procion MX dyes. For them to last well, the water you mix them with should be pH-neutral (neither acidic nor alkaline), with a pH around 7.0, and you should use soft water, such as rainwater, in preference to calcium-containing groundwater. Both of these types of dye last so well in water solution, in fact, that you can buy them in that form. You cannot buy Procion MX dyes already dissolved in water, because they go bad too quickly. However, even Drimarene K and Remazol dyes will go bad fairly quickly if there is any sodium carbonate or other high-pH chemical present. Expect a pure water mixture of Drimarene K or Remazol dye to last for months, but a mixture containing either of these dyes with sodium carbonate or trisodium phosphate to last less than a day, perhaps as little as one hour. Do not mix your Dylon dyes with water until you are ready to use them. If you use only part of the packet of Dylon dye, be careful to seal the rest away from any chance of contamination from moisture, such as the humidity in the air.
The majority of the material in a packet of Dylon dye is either inert material or dye fixative, including salt, possibly some detergent as a wetting agent, and either sodium carbonate or trisodium phosphate. Assume that your entire packet of Dylon dye, of either brand, to contain onlly about 5 grams of actual dye. When you measure out dye from a Dylon dye package, the entire packet contains about 5 grams of dye, although the total weight is more like 50 or 100 grams. Do not use the same recipes that you would use for pure unmixed dye powder of any sort, such as your Drimarene K dye powder, which, like Procion MX dye powder and Remazol dye powder, is far more concentrated. Of course this means that you must add your sodium carbonate and any salt needed (some types of dyeing need a lot of salt, others none at all) auxiliary chemicals yourself for your Drimarene K dye to work properly.
Drimarene K dye can pretty much be used according to the same recipes as Procion MX dyes, such as the tie-dyeing or low water immersion (LWI) recipes on my web site. However, they require more warmth for the reaction between cellulose and dye. For recipes specific to hand-dyeing with Drimarene K dyes, see the Batik Oetoro website. Note that the Drimafix chemical called for in one of the recipes is also known as sodium silicate; see my page on using sodium silicate as a dye fixative.
For accounts of the problems involved in using Dylon Permanent Dyes in ways different from the package instructions, which will also apply to the use of Dylon Colourfast Dye if it is still fresh enough to use, see the following discussion in the Dye Forum on my website:
I would be very interested to hear how this works out for you. I hope that you will eventually be able to find a source for fresher dyes.
Posted: Sunday - August 08, 2010 at 11:07 AM
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Published On: Aug 29, 2012 02:49 PM
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Published On: Aug 29, 2012 02:49 PM