Читать книгу The Practical Ostrich Feather Dyer - Alexander Bartlett Paul - Страница 24

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Old faded light colors, such as blue, pink, ecru, corn, drab, etc., that you are desirous of bleaching white, can be accomplished in the following way. Wash feathers thoroughly in warm water, using soap. Add a small pinch of soda, after which rinse in about three warm waters to insure the removal of every particle of soap. Dilute in clean bowl or basin one-quarter ounce of permanganate of potash in one gallon of boiling water. The water must be as hot as steam or fire can make it. Enter feathers, and let remain in bath about one minute, a few seconds more or less will do no harm, nor will it make any material difference in the result; continually agitating in bath with clean stick, after which you will notice that the feathers have assumed a light, full brown color. Take out of the bath, but do not rinse them; let the loose color drain off for a few seconds, meantime empty bath and rinse your bowl thoroughly; then dilute half an ounce of oxalic acid or sulphurous acid in one gallon of boiling water. The water must be absolutely clean. Enter feathers, and let remain in until all the color has entirely disappeared, gently agitating while in bath. After the bath has become transparent and the feathers white, which will take about two minutes, empty out about two-thirds of the bath, and add cold water to reduce to hand heat; then add a small handful of starch and a drop of diluted violet, and enter your feathers, and let them remain in about one minute, squeeze out and dry in starch. Blue you will generally find the hardest of all light colors to remove for white, the soda and permanganate seeming apparently to decompose the color. The moment it enters the oxalic bath, it generally, to a more or less extent, develops the color again. Such being the case, after rinsing in luke warm water to remove acid, return to a weak soda bath for a minute, and then rinse and return to permanganate bath, rather weaker than the first one; in other words, repeat the first operation all through, only in weaker solutions.

This process can be used successfully in bleaching all light colors white. In bleaching natural blacks, however, it would not be practicable. A recipe for bleaching natural black will be found in another portion of the book.

WHITE—page 16. LILAC—page 56. LIGHT PINK—page 20. LEMON—page 52.