Yes! You can also make mordants using found objects like rusty nails.. as long as you're careful!

Are there any preservative aspects to using a dye like this, or are there better options?

@@charlesfitton9677 not sure what you mean by preservative?

@@thecheaperthebetter4477 to preserve the cloth ...as in tanbark on sails

I guess they wouldn't have known about the properties of Aluminium pots in walnut dyeing back in the day, as the metal costed a lot more than gold lol

same here

I think mine is down because I stopped drinking. It could be Townsends too.

@@sstills951 Bourbon makes one strong like virile bull.

Makes sense. This channel is incredible relaxing, informative, and entertaining, especially if you're interested in historical America.

I come to Townsends for my fix of norepinephrine.

Rest in peace grandpa. He had good taste.

That sounds delicious! Im sure he loved it

It is good to have the memories.

As Mario said, your grandpa had good tastes.

Black walnuts are amazing in baked goods. Mom made a cookie with them that were the _best_ ever!

even continuously overdying with walnut gives a good black

I heared that this methode was even used to make black piano keys out of pear wood (wich is rather light brown but takes stains very well).

A “reasonable black”? Most the founding fathers would disagree with you.

@@mikeappleget482 please expand on this comment and elaborate please.

@@mikeappleget482 that’s HILARIOUS

Also hempen!

id love to see this

Hemp is much too controversial for this channel.

@@mikeappleget482 It doesn't have to be. The recreational Use of Marijuana and Hemp rope making are completely different. Hemp has been continuously used for ropemaking in the US and around the world for Hundreds or even thousands of years. He doesn't even have to touch on the Smoking of the plant in any way.

@@bananieldiamonds1921 if one should see if the growing of hemp is even legal in his state. Which it is "if" the thc levels are low enough. I found an article talking about hemp crops being destroyed and not usable because of bad thc levels. Second Townsend would need to find out if he as a civilian can even buy unprocessed hemp and process it. Which I assume also involves government oversight and regulations in most states. So yes it could be possible, however it would not be a simple task compared to linen, cotton, jute, etc.

I processed a bunch to eat about a month and a half ago and the corners of my fingernails are still black lol

As kids we would throw them at each other knowing it would hurt and stain our nice school clothes.

@@ericwilliams1659 we had a small apple tree of some kind we would throw from. Didn't stain our clothes but the smell was absolutely revolting

That just means you accomplished something!

We had black walnut trees at home. My mom would gather them and crack them open for the nuts. Yes her hands were black for a long time. I still miss her so much.

Is there any preservative aspects to using a dye like this, or are there better options?

Wow! What a cool technique. Thanks for posting that.

@@itgetter9 it was so easy and I hope others have fun experimenting with rotting walnuts. I can imagine a group of older kids all gloved and wearing old clothes having fun dying stuff as a project--like small unfinished shelves or little wooden boxes or linen placemats....😊

It doesnt stain the edges of your books when its humid? Did you polyurethane the wood after you dyed it?

@@rpurdy4821 No--it seemed to just soak deep into the unfinished wood. I just rubbed off any excess bits of walnut hulls and let the shelf dry. It gets very humid in the summer but I've not had a book or cloth get stained...not yet anyway. The unfinished wood was pine and was thirsty and dry--maybe that makes a difference? I guess you could experiment with blocks made of different types of wood to see how it finishes.

Yes, here in France Walnut dye is used a lot, a wood dye is made from the dried husks and is used for bringing up the colour of Oak, you must be careful not to get any on your hands as it will stain your skin, although I did notice the presenter here immersing his hands in the liquid dye without becoming brown ? Chris B.

Good point ... maybe they should .. actually they really should do an ep on that. Would be quite the thing.

My grandma had a 5th grade education of the 40's as well. Married into my grandpa, who had no education at all. Turns out, it was enough for her to be a school teacher, and for him to be the best teacher life could ever present to me. Miss them so much...

Brown is a very unappreciated color. My grandmother insisted on a little back in every thing she embroidered.

My mom loved brown also. And tan.

I'm not even 30 yo and brown is in my top three of favourite colours, while you are talking about your grandmas and maybe even you alone are older than me. 😂

My grandfather also could not read. I have his large old bible. He loved it because he could think of the stories based on the pictures.

Squirrel wars are real

My parking is under my neighbor's walnut tree. Squirrels would drop husks all the time on my car. It was white and the husks would stain my paint, could not wash it off

This is great

That being said, should it even be used as a hair dye?🐝❤️🤗

In high enough concentrations, it kills fish too. The natives did this to gather large amounts of fish all at once. Might think about that before washing your clothes out in the creek, the way he suggests.

It’s also an herbicide.

YES!! It also gets into my system and organs through my skin and makes me very sick in my gut probably gets in the liver and such. Absolutely essential to wear gloves and not try to be a hero with black walnuts. We should respect nature and what it can do to us! Thank you for sharing this crucial information! And your experience 🧡 Doing things like this needs to remain fun! and mistakes could be made with children or other sensitive individuals getting it on skin or in their system.

@Helene L - Using onion skins, beets, and other veggies can make lovely, pastel Easter egg dyes, too. And it really enchants the kids when they help!

Saddening is like turning down the color saturation on your tv

I would love to see a video explaining this!

Me too

@@abarn9541, I wish I could. I can get the materials easily, but I am no longer physically capable of doing the work, and no one else is interested in learning the process. I can explain at length if you want, but it is a lot of work.

The same recipe can be used to give cheap gun stocks a nicer look.

Yes, I love the way those smell too. We had one in my yard when I was a kid. It takes me back.

In the old times it was planted to get less mosquitos in and around the house

@@sosteve9113 I need to plant some around my house now then. :)

@@fumastertoo and in autumn you have nuts and can make liquor out of them if you want

Galls are the growths formed by various insects etc...The galls formed on oaks are used to make ink, not the insects. You can make ink from the walnut hulls also though, just reduce the liquid and add a bit of salt as a preservative

Thanks ... because most people just say 'ferric acetate' and I wonder how the household kitchen gets hold of that in the normal day to day of things. So, just for clarification, you wash the iron pot or pan or cutlery (say knives) in vinegar to clean them and the oxidisation reaction produces a liquid that can be used to set dye?

@@ValeriePallaoro Find something that is well rusted, and submerge it in white spirit vinegar for as long as you can. Or, get steel wool, wet it, and leave it for a couple of days until rusty, and soak in vinegar. Run the product through a coffee filter to get rid of the sediment.

@@ValeriePallaoro Yes, you can clean rust off metals with white vinegar and salt. Try it on your outdoor grill before cooking. It works amazingly, humans have been using it forever

Are there other natural plants that you know of by name that work well? I’ve been trying to kill the pokeweed in my yard to just one corner and now only have about 3 plants, how do you recommend the dye process? Are you worried about toxin transfer or is it safe to handle after rinsing out?

@@arianaink100 Bless you for wanting to do natural dyeing. It's really interesting and sheds a lot of light on how much we take color for granted. Warning: this subject can be a very, very deep "rabbit hole." The roadside-plant dyeing that I liked best was Queen Anne's Lace. I got both lemon yellow and grapefruit skin yellow. I have not personally used pokeweed because we keep our weeds cut down to protect neighbor children from eating the berries. But our local living history place has samples to show, and they basically made a strong "tea" with the berries, steeped the fiber until they got the color they wanted, and finished. I have read that an after-bath acidic modifier like a cup of vinegar helps set the color but I have not found any resource that says they have figured out how to make poke dye color-fast. Toxin transfer is not a problem after rinsing. But you should retain one set of pots and tools only for dyeing, which is good practice in any case. Our daughter has tried goldenrod, rhubarb, marigolds, hibiscus and more, and I have used black beans, cabbage, hibiscus, goldenrod, turmeric and beet powder. We both used yarn with a high wool content and alum was the main mordant. Blue was not obtained with any of these dyestuffs. Two tips seldom found: you need neutral water so I went and bought gallons and gallons to do my dyeing. And for many vegetable dyes you cannot let them boil - at all - or the color will go brown. The Maiwa dye company has a good "Guide to Natural Dyes" which covers all sorts of basic prep and mordanting details. Jenny Dean's Wild Color and her website (www.jennydean.co.uk/) have so much information you could go crazy. She talks about mushrooms and wild bedstraw (cleavers where I live) and all sorts. This website is also useful: joybileefarm.com/weeds-natural-dyes/. If you are new to this, ignore the crafts-type KZfaq videos about cabbage, beans and avocado pits -- these food dyes don't work well unless you are quite skilled.

@@arianaink100 The toxins in pokeweed berries are in the seeds themself. If you don't crush the seeds, the toxins shouldn't leach out. Pokeberries have been used to dye fabrics and the juice from them used to color wines for a long time

You can dye things with purple cabbage and onion skins. Definitely not the brightest of colors. It does work though.

Yep. A nut cracker is pretty useless for black walnuts. My family resorted to a 16 ounce hammer and a concrete floor when time came to crack walnuts. It took more than one hit with that hammer to get the shell open and if we had had a small hand sledge hammer we probably would have used that. Squirrels don't crack nuts, they scrape and scrape away on the shell with their incisors on one spot until they scrape it so thin they can crack that part, then move on to the part of the shell next to the original spot and scrape there until they can get into the shell and get the meat out.

I live in Florida and just googled to see if black walnut trees can grow here. As far as I read they can.

@@Marlaina North Florida they will, apparently. I’m hoping to put in a grove for the kids on our land.

Yup, both were brought up here to the Plata region by immigrants. I am a soguero (kinda, it's my hobby, and I only know how to make three kinds of raw hyde rope weaves as of now lol) usually we won't stain raw hyde tho, the process messes with the chemistry of the leather too much, and may weaken it. The only thing in that it may be done is painting the lasos used for the sport to keep them stiff, but these aren't expected to be strong anyways. My talabartero is an artist at stained leather though, I've been waiting for years to buy a silver lined basto he's made and still haven't got the chance lol

@@riograndedosulball248 its a great craft to learn, I really appreciate a soguero's art, it's super time consuming but it super beautiful. definitely worth the money in my opinion.

Thank you for your little tidbit of knowledge!! Enjoyed your post!!

Beetroot produces a beautiful dye.

Avocado pit gives you a pink.

Nice to meet you!

It would be fun if you were featured on a video with him!

Are those called "Nutgalls"? The Peterkin Papers, a must-read, had a chapter in which nutgalls and vinegar were used to make ink... which went unused for a reason I won't spoil!

@jtl543 - Sounds like fun, but with a mature walnut dropping those nuts all over the place, you don't have to go to extraordinary means to get walnut sprouts OR a concussion!

I didn’t know that! Thanks🐝🤗❤️

Yup! Walnut husk juice has an antifungal property (ring"worm" is actually a fungal infection). I suspect that light patch isn't due to the juice itself, but is simply subtle scar tissue, from where your skin healed against the invasion.

@@adreabrooks11 , thank you! ...I never thought about the spot being a scar. That makes sense since it did seem to be a stubborn infection.

Juglone is also an insect repellent so that suggests that garments dyed with it could potentially be resistant to insect damage.

Thanks so much ... because that really needs to be said; he must've got so used to it that his nose forgot. I don't have a nose for smells, and it maddens my house mates when I ferment stuff, so, I won't do this (like I was gonna) on your recommendation. I'm sure my housemates are very thank full. Much appreciated bit of knowledge.

How do you add iron?

Osage orange.

@@turdferguson2982 Yep that's another name for it.

That's exactly where I found him from!!

This here is exactly why I stopped using reddit. It's like Facebook all over again 😂

The unfortunate thing is you have to deal with redditors.

How is that done?🐝🤗❤️

@@deborahdanhauer8525 I just cooked some black walnuts, hulls and all, in a crockpot in the garage for a couple days. Add water as needed then strain it and add a little denatured alcohol to preserve it in a mason jar.

@@lookitcrashed ok, thank you so much!🐝🤗❤️

That blue printed cloth would make a great waistcoat back now that it's been dyed, too. I'd like to see that.

We made atlatls out of corn stalks and loaded them with walnuts as kids. I’m convinced you could kill someone with one if you wanted to! I know you can knock someone out😳❤️🐝

I have very found childhood memories of defending myself from the village bully with walnuts and chestnuts. A great skill I will pass on to my grandchildren. They are getting sling shots for Christmas.

@@elizabethraworth64 The gift of violence? 😂

Cut the tree down . Let it sit on the Forrest floor for 2-5 years to stain the wood. Then cut it up for lumber.

Walnut is my favorite wood for furniture

Those fabrics turned out beautiful!!

My nextdoor neighbor has a massive walnut tree that bombards my house all summer & fall. The squirrels eat the hell out of them, from when they are just beyond buds to into November. I throw them to the fence line, and the squirrels clear them out. Only downside is the walnut shells that are left.