just fyi, the recipe actually describes a mordant... copper tartarate... the use of a copper pot and the addition of the tartare makes the mordant while dyeing the cloth. you can actually get different shades by boiling it in an aluminum pot (brighter colours) or an iron pot (darker colours). I love natural dyes the chemistry is so fun!
We had a black walnut tree in our backyard growing up, and the nuts were my grandpa's favorite. He just passed away a few weeks ago and this makes me remember gathering the nuts for him and getting stained hands. I'll miss making him black walnut fudge, but happy to have this memory today :)
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.
Nice dye episode! I had an unfinished bookshelf and literally walked to the yard and grabbed a bunch of rotting walnuts off the ground (with gloves) and rubbed them all over the shelving. Turned the inexpensive pine into gorgeous dark brown with the grain visible in lighter brown. Brushed off excess and let it dry. I've been using that shelf for years with nothing but an occasional polish--still looks great.
@@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....😊
@@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.
@@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 learned about walnut dye when I decided to harvest some walnuts from street trees growing in my neighborhood. Only after picking the nuts did I find out the green juice from the outer fruit was almost a permanent skin dye! My hands were green for over a week!
“Well, we’ve had a great day experimenting here on the homestead with the dyeing process.” I know full well what you mean…but that line made me laugh more than it should have.
My dad had an ongoing war with squirrels. All because the squirrels liked to throw the staining hulls on his new 1957 Yellow Chevy. He was very fond of the ‘57 Chevy. The squirrel war lasted for about 25 years (how many generations of squirrels was That 🤷🏻♀️❓). …till an ICE storm took out the walnut tree. (Yes, walnut dye is strong.). The adored car did not get hurt by the tree…just the house.). 😂. We sure cleaned purple/black spots off the yellow car very often
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 reminded me. My grandmother loved the color brown. Strange color to love to me but she would say “ what a pretty brown”. I miss her so much. Thank you for the memory. Also she lived her entire life cooking these dishes and dying clothes and living off the land. Had a 3rd grade education. And by 3rd grade I mean 3rd grade in the 40s. But she was smart and wise. Couldn’t read a lick. Couldn’t write her name. But she could handle bout anything else.
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...
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. 😂
I've been processing black walnuts for years, I've even made a hair dye with it. Yesterday when I was processing some my gloves ripped and I didn't have any more but I didn't really care about them staining my hands. BIG MISTAKE. I know the juglone in black walnuts is toxic to some plants and horses and will kill them but I had never heard of it being caustic to humans. Well the toxic is sensitizing meaning the more you touch it the more sensitive you become. Apparently in some people it can cause some redness and irritation and in extreme cases chemical burns. I've never had a problem until yesterday and didn't even know it could happen but I now have CHEMICAL BURNS on my hands. Just typing this is physically painful but I wanted to warn others that this could happen to them. Please wear gloves so this doesn't happen to you too.
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.
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.
Using the papery "skin" off of an onion (the skin is called the "tunic") will produce a yellow dye. Combining this with a dip into a walnut dye pot will make a warmer brown. The iron from the pots used during this period "sadden" the resulting color (that was the term used) and make the resulting color cooler and greyer. I process sheep's wool, dye and spin it and have experimented with easy to obtain natural dyes. BTW, beet is not colorfast.
I taught my husband to make walnut dye by having him mix the hulls in with the oak leaves and bark I was having him boil up to make tannin. He wanted me to teach him to make leather without using a chemical tan. He did all the work as I told him day by day, and ended up with a beautiful, supple deerskin dyed a deep, dark brown.
@@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.
I made some just a month ago from the tree in my yard, super dark!!!! Also, show more cooking, gardening, and maybe cookware stuff (like the earthen oven)
We use this fruit dye (long cooked fruits, not the tasty nuts, in french Brou de Noix) to colour our beams. After several layers, we finish with pure line oil. It makes a dark colour, well protecting the wood. Gives the house quite an authentic ambiance.
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
My daughter and I did a big natural dyeing project a couple of years ago. It's amazing what a nice variety of colors are available from roadside plants, although most that we worked with are very interesting in how they are not color-fast. The most dramatic is pokeweed berries, which produce a bright magenta that fades in weeks to a sort of khaki. Turmeric (obviously not a roadside weed) requires a tiny amount to produce an orangey gold, which I got to fade to pale yellow in two days of summer sunshine.
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 UA-cam 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
The black walnut tree was always my favorite in Ohio, and I love the smell of the green hulls before they start to decay. You can do so much with the walnut tree, Dave Canterbury has a great video on its many uses.
In your neck of the woods look for Phaeolus schweienitzii, the pine dye polypore mushroom. You'll find it around pines and other conifers where it is kinda sandy and more open. I used to sell it. You can get 20-30 ponds at a time pretty easy if you find it. You can look now for the dead ones from late summer. It will return perennially. Gives yellows or reds depending on mordant. Red spalts wood naturally.
The iron addition mentioned may be ferric acetate, from cleaning rust off iron using vinegar, it will bind with the phenolic compounds that make the brown colour to form a permanent black or dark brown in much the same way as iron gall ink works.
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
A tip with dying the hanks of yarn - move the tie bands a bit and re-dip, stops little patches of yarn which are lighter than the rest. Otherwise there is a gradient of colour depth which might be just what you want in your wooly jumper or socks, but might not be either. Love this episode, I've long been wanting to ask for more about the women's work and how they got on for fabrics. Thanks Townsends.
Miss the sweet smell of fall in the Midwest. Walnut and oak tannins with the moist fall air. But really, folks back up then would trade ten walnut brown cloths for one bright colored print.
When I moved out of Florida and finally identified black walnuts, it was due to the squirrels. They LOVE the nuts and would all turn a red-brown from nose to toes from getting them open. Once I learned how to open them myself, I was amazed how strong a squirrel's teeth must be. These are practically ironclad!
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.
My parents had a small walnut orchard when I was a kid. In mid-October we would go collect the walnuts: father would climb in each tree and shake them, us kids were collecting the fallen walnuts (in shell) off the ground. Oh the dark brown stains we'd end up with on the hands. And they were fairly persistent too, it took several days of constant washing to get them off.
Your joy for this way of life is infectious. Oh how I long for the days of old. Thank you for helping us remember to be grateful for the simple things in life.
This was so good. Quite an interesting process for dying fabrics. The cabin looks so nice, with the autumn colours on the trees, in the background. Cheers!
Wow! As a professional yarn dyer, this was a delightful crossing of all of my interests. I have a jar of oak galls my husband has been collecting for me ready to go for some natural dyeing. Thank you for this lovely video and showing people the fascinating art of dyeing!
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!
I left about 5 dozen Black Walnuts in a tub this past fall till they got good and rotten, then I peeled the husks off, put them in a study cardboard box with a mixture of soil and wood shavings, and buried them about two feet down over the winter. Then I dug them up as soon as the frost ended, and put them in a tub with soil over them. Just about all of them sprouted, I planted a bunch of them and gave a bunch of them away. Great Video Townsends! I love working with Black Walnut!
@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!
Walnut trees are great. In south America we call them Nogales as for the plural form and Nogal for the singular form, it's a common choice for the leather craftsman here to dye leather, at least in Argentina we have plenty of different kinds of leather craftsman, we have talabarteros, who's are specialist in Horse saddles and all the associated with horse riding, we have sogueros who are specialist in knots, weaving and creating whips with leather, they do pretty intricate and ornate stuff with that, its mainly small stuff they do, and regular utilitarian stuff or clothes are made by artesanos, every type of craft is heavily influenced by the gaucho culture too. And walnuts are common enough, at least way more common than the pecan nut tree that was actually brought up from the US and grows fine here but is not a native species. And to be honest i don't believe the walnut tree is a native species either lol.
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.
Seventeen years ago I ordered patterns for fall-front trousers, and 1830s vest from Townsends. We made the garments from white cotton fabric, then dyed them as you described. My wife set the dye with a vinegar rinse. They have maintained their color well and are very comfortable. Thanks for the entire homestead series.
Oh I love this one! You sure bring back memories. We had 3 large, mature walnut trees near us when I was child and the swing was hung up off one of them. I was scrubbed within an inch of my life once for running around barefoot on the "slips" that had been rotting underneath the tree. Didn't need anything to set that dye ... I was walnut colored up to my ankles for a few weeks. :-)
Growing up on a old Pennsylvania Dutch farm that was my foster home, I was taught by my foster father Jim how to collect the walnuts, and crack them, and also how to make the deep walnut stain for wood. I love the smell of the green walnuts so fresh and zingy! He also taught me how to grow the trees from seed,. I live in the city now far away from the farm and this brought back those wonderful memories, and the torn gloves and walking around for weeks with green brown black finger tips! lol but the shells too were the best when smoking meats! I never thought of using them as a cloth or wool dye! what a amazing plant! Thanks so much for sharing! :)
Ah, black walnuts. We had a black walnut tree in our backyard when I was a kid. Me and my siblings would call the fruit "stink bombs" because the smell would get worse as they rotted on the ground. We'd pelt each other with them, lol. We didn't even realize they were walnuts at the time.
This is so cool! I have a BS degree in Fashion Design. In my college weaving class, we did a natural dye workshop where we met at a park and cooked up dyes using onion skins, cochineal beetles, cabbage, Queen Anne’s lace, and other plants to dye wool yarns that we later used in a weaving project. I wish we had used walnuts. I love that brown color. It never occurred to me to over-dye fabric that’s already printed. That looks amazing!
Hi Jon just this minute reading about yourself on Reddit, Ask Reddit sub. The topic is which you tuber would be really friendly in real life. Your getting alot of love. Well done Sir.
The chemical that walnuts produce is called Juglone... named after the genus: Juglans (Juglans nigra is the black walnut). It is found in every part of the plant, from the roots to the leaves, but is found especially abundant in the fruit. I grew up eating black walnuts, some local ice cream parlors make great ice cream with the nuts. Super expensive though to buy the nut meat though... we always just processed them in house as it were (or just run over the nuts with your car to remove the husk lol). But the wood is also a great product. It is easily the most expensive (if you get a good straight trunk over 10-15ft long) trees in the midwest baring gall oaks.
In our neighborhood all the kids liked throwing these walnuts and playing with them. We all had brown fingers and our parents would say "Just don't get it on your clothes! It doesn't come out of clothes!". 🤣
When walnuts are green, they're good for medicinal uses, too. When my husband and I were first dating, we went riding horses one day. He noticed I had a ring worm on back of my neck. (roommate's cat 🙄) I'd been treating with prescription cream but it didn't seem to be doing much good. Husband got a green walnut, cut a slice off the hull and gently rubbed it on the infected area. The only thing he forgot to tell me was NOT to cover it or to get it in sunlight. 🙄 First, I had to put up my long hair in a ponytail. Then, we had to change our riding route to a heavily wooded (shady) area. But, within 3 days ringworm way gone. ...leaving a slightly lighter area of skin that persists to this day. (he forgot to tell me that, too)
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.
Natural dyer here. Yes, everything Townsends says is true. And if you add a little iron to the pot (or use a iron pot), you'll get a brown so dark it's almost black. What he doesn't say is that the walnut hull sludge is FOUL. Smells like a sewer made love to a skunk.
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.
When Kentucky was first being explored. The woods were old growth with a very dense canopy. Black is considered a very poor camouflage but in very dense, dark woods such as pre-civilized Kentucky, black is the best choice. None other than Daniel Boone was famous for having the blackest of buckskin. But he took the secret of dying jet black buckskin to the grave with him.
Right on time! I have 2 baskets and they're still falling! When I was 9 my best friend was 73. I learned a lot. You ever hear of mixing it with pine sap? Mr. Emmett used it on wood and canvas
People in town are always glad to have you pick up walnuts in their yard. I often pick up a few on the street, but when people notice what you are doing, they invite you to pick further in their yards.
Thanks for the expirmentation and clear direction - I love that you read out the recipes and notations from a hundred years ago as if they just posted their findings on social media - time is nothing when it comes to the written word
It's a *Dyeing* artform... Had a gal who lived down the road from me was big into using natural dyes for her home spun wool and hand woven fabrics. This was in the early 1970's
Green Walnuts also come in handy for kids wanting to build a catapult or giant slingshot... (No, mom, I have NO IDEA how the barn got those brown spots on the siding...)
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.
I grew up in a place where we had several black walnut trees and have had my hands stained many times. Although I never thought of it, I am not surprised the hulls could be used as a dye. Very interesting!
Very cool...Thanks for doing the video! We have a 80' tall walnut tree in our yard along with many maples, it is an amazing tree and we only get a heavy harvest of nuts every other year! Much to the chagrin of our squirrel population. Not sure I will ever dye anything but good to know we could! Have a great day. Mike 🇨🇦🍁👍
There were walnut trees in my grandmother's backyard, where I used to play in the seventies. I remember playing with the walnuts and getting my hands stained brown.
I’m the Museum Educator at the Agricultural History Farm Park in Montgomery County. We have black walnut trees everywhere. This is very helpful to add to my programming!
My dad and uncle own some land right up against the Great Smoky Mountains National Park by Gatlinburg. I've been running around there my entire life. Until a few years ago when she passed, it was Grandma's property, and before her, my great-grandparents had their hand built home and a 1 room school house converted to a small grocery store in the 50's next to it. There's a black walnut tree outside the house. We've been twisting our ankles on these damn things for generations.
This vid brings back childhood memories of picking up walnuts in neighboring orchards for spending money as a young child. Hands and knees would become stained....Dad finally bought us kids pooper scoopers to prevent this...lol!!
Fun fact: black walnut juice can also be used to make a forced patina on steel, which helps protect the metal. Five or six years ago, I heard of the technique from some survival channel or other on UA-cam, and decided to try it with a hatchet I had recently restored from a rusty woodshed. It resulted in a very attractive "blue" (think slate or gunmetal colour) tone to the metal, which has received compliments and interest. I'm no chemist, but I suspect that there are oils in the walnut husks, and also something that creates a darker oxidation layer to stave off more invasive rust. Whatever the case, the hatchet still looks great, and has never had another fleck of orangey rust, despite exposure to inclement weather on a number of backwoods trips. Fun fact #2: The nuts themselves are edible. Remove the husks (which contain bitter tannins that will seep through the shell) and thoroughly wash the shelled nuts. I use a bucket and hose, but I once knew an old-timer who used a discarded, tumbler-style washing machine. When most (the more, the better) of the black gunk has been removed, allow to dry for a week or two. This will cause the meat inside the nut to shrink, and be less difficult to extract. I say "less difficult" because it's still a chore to individually hammer each nut - placing it on the broadest side and striking the narrow tip for best results - and then extracting the meat. After all that work, there's not a ton of food to show for it - but it's calorically-dense and keeps well (and requires basically zero care the rest of the year), so I can see why it would appeal, back in the day. The nuts themselves have a rather more fruity flavour than the English walnuts one typically gets at the grocery store, and a softer mouth-feel. Quite nice in desserts like Christmas breads, fudge and on top of apple crumble. I recommend giving them a try - though I admit the hassle keeps me from going out of my way to acquire them most of the time.
I remember reading a recipe for ink many years ago when I was playing with dip pens. It was much the same as one of these dye recipes; walnut husks and some iron let sit for some time and then filtered.
As a kid my dad took me walnut hunting every October here in West Virginia. After shucking them we payed then on old metal bed frames layered with cardboard in the garage ceiling. Two weeks before thanksgiving we cracked them and started making black walnut fudge and nut rolls for the holidays. This has brought back many memories from those days. Thank you
I walked the Freedom Trail in Boston Wednesday last, immersing myself in the late 17th and 18th century. I thought of Townsend’s the entire time, and regret I was unable to visit you in Indiana as I was passing by.
We have an English walnut tree in our yard and this would definitely work well with them too. It's crazy how quickly it will dye your hands orange when de-husking them.
When I was around 13 years old I hunted a lot of squirrels in the woods behind our home. There was an old walnut tree next to my grandfathers tin roofed barn near the house and I just had to listen for the sounds of walnuts falling on that tin roof to know when dinner was in the tree.
You can get brown out of coffee and tea. Or if you want to look in nature you can use acorns and oak galls. There are any number of colors you can get from nature that you might be able to find on the homestead. You can get blue from blackberries with an iron mordant. Or pink from birch, gray with the iron mordant. Or greens from ivy. Just depends on what's available around the homestead. You just have to look around and experiment.
Last year, I very innocently opened a black walnut husk with my fingers to get to the nut inside and my fingers and nails stayed brown for over a week. It would make for a great substitute for henna!
I needed this when I was a child. I just discovered your channel and it's amazing. So calming and informative and you have a pleasant voice and cadence.
This is very informative! I like to eat the nuts but here where we live walnut trees all over. Especially our neighbors yards which affects my garden I've have to move something every few years. Doesn't help when the squirrels keep 'planting' them. Ugh.
Wow, this is pretty neat. Could you make a video about the different kinds of dye and colors that can be made from natural ingredients? Or maybe about the dyeing trade on the frontier?
We had two enormous black walnut trees in our yard when I was a kid. Every Autumn, the squirrels in our yard all got stained paws, chins, chests, and mouths from the walnut husks. Many stain spots appeared on the sidewalks, too. The sound of a walnut falling through leaves and twigs always got our attention - especially if we were under the tree. A favorite set of memories, indeed.
We have walnut trees all over the place here in PA, black walnut, both out in the woods and fields, and in town. When I read about using the husk for dyeing, I started wondered about collecting them and experimenting with dyeing. Haven't tried it yet, though.
We have a lot of English walnuts where I live in Utah, and I've been meaning to use a bunch of husks to make dye. This is inspiring me to follow through.
Harry Marinakis is working on a book (its apparently at manuscript stage) cataloging the results of various even older (700-1600) dying techniques on leather. He recreated and photographed over 100 recipes from 16 manuscripts on the subject (skipping those that involved hazardous stuff like lead or arsenic). Among his notes are 1: wear rubber gloves when handling walnut dye 2: walnut dye can be darkened with vinigroon
I watched a video recently where a guy dyed some surplus ACU uniform items with walnut dye. Regular ACU is a pretty terrible camouflage pattern, but the addition of the dark brown dye really helped, and it worked on everything but the plastic zipper. It even dyed the nylon velcro.
I recently got into dip pen writing, and one of the inks commonly used is walnut ink, which writes very well and produces beautiful sepia tones on paper.
You can get various shades of brown yarn (tan, camel, dark brown, etc) to knit or crochet with to make beautiful ski sweaters and hats. Just leave it in for different lengths of time, as Jon explained.
I dyed my traps with walnut hulls when I was a kid. One year we had a real bad drought and the ground was like cement. I stepped out on the porch onto a small carpet by the door and almost fell. The squirrels had a hard time digging so they just shoved the walnuts under the carpet. Memories. On a side note, walnut trees in a pasture will make cows sick if they eat the grass around the trees.
i am very thankful that i found this channel. an excellent host and content makes it almost addicting. keep up the good work! history must be taught because it is being forgotten, especially in america.
I use deer antler and bone for several craft and practical purposes and have found walnuts make a wonderful stain for knife handles, belt buckles, beads, etc.
Just subscribed . I live in Eastern side of South Africa where they grow pecan nut trees . I got a bucket of the shells , and dyed my hand spun wool . It looked a bit wishy washy light brown , so added a few handfuls of rusty iron . It changed the colour so beautifully . Almost a shimmered medium brown . So , pecans can do wonders as well . Now going to watch more of your videos 🌼
just fyi, the recipe actually describes a mordant... copper tartarate... the use of a copper pot and the addition of the tartare makes the mordant while dyeing the cloth.
you can actually get different shades by boiling it in an aluminum pot (brighter colours) or an iron pot (darker colours). I love natural dyes the chemistry is so fun!
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
We had a black walnut tree in our backyard growing up, and the nuts were my grandpa's favorite. He just passed away a few weeks ago and this makes me remember gathering the nuts for him and getting stained hands. I'll miss making him black walnut fudge, but happy to have this memory today :)
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!
My blood pressure goes down when I watch Townsends.
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.
wool dyed dark brown with walnut then overdyed with indigo produces a reasonable black.
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
I made the mistake of gathering a bunch of black walnuts and hitting them with a baseball bat, my hands looked like it had crap on it for weeks.
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.
Been making and using walnut dye for my whole life, taught by my elders.
Is there any preservative aspects to using a dye like this, or are there better options?
Nice dye episode! I had an unfinished bookshelf and literally walked to the yard and grabbed a bunch of rotting walnuts off the ground (with gloves) and rubbed them all over the shelving. Turned the inexpensive pine into gorgeous dark brown with the grain visible in lighter brown. Brushed off excess and let it dry. I've been using that shelf for years with nothing but an occasional polish--still looks great.
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.
You should do a video on frontier processing of fibers like flax, hemp, and wool for both cloth and cordage.
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 learned about walnut dye when I decided to harvest some walnuts from street trees growing in my neighborhood. Only after picking the nuts did I find out the green juice from the outer fruit was almost a permanent skin dye! My hands were green for over a week!
“Well, we’ve had a great day experimenting here on the homestead with the dyeing process.”
I know full well what you mean…but that line made me laugh more than it should have.
Good point ... maybe they should .. actually they really should do an ep on that. Would be quite the thing.
My dad had an ongoing war with squirrels. All because the squirrels liked to throw the staining hulls on his new 1957 Yellow Chevy. He was very fond of the ‘57 Chevy. The squirrel war lasted for about 25 years (how many generations of squirrels was That 🤷🏻♀️❓). …till an ICE storm took out the walnut tree. (Yes, walnut dye is strong.). The adored car did not get hurt by the tree…just the house.). 😂. We sure cleaned purple/black spots off the yellow car very often
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
This reminded me. My grandmother loved the color brown. Strange color to love to me but she would say “ what a pretty brown”. I miss her so much. Thank you for the memory. Also she lived her entire life cooking these dishes and dying clothes and living off the land. Had a 3rd grade education. And by 3rd grade I mean 3rd grade in the 40s. But she was smart and wise. Couldn’t read a lick. Couldn’t write her name. But she could handle bout anything else.
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.
I've been processing black walnuts for years, I've even made a hair dye with it. Yesterday when I was processing some my gloves ripped and I didn't have any more but I didn't really care about them staining my hands. BIG MISTAKE. I know the juglone in black walnuts is toxic to some plants and horses and will kill them but I had never heard of it being caustic to humans. Well the toxic is sensitizing meaning the more you touch it the more sensitive you become. Apparently in some people it can cause some redness and irritation and in extreme cases chemical burns. I've never had a problem until yesterday and didn't even know it could happen but I now have CHEMICAL BURNS on my hands. Just typing this is physically painful but I wanted to warn others that this could happen to them. Please wear gloves so this doesn't happen to you too.
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.
Slimy walnuts is also used to be a rust prevention for trapper traps.
Using the papery "skin" off of an onion (the skin is called the "tunic") will produce a yellow dye. Combining this with a dip into a walnut dye pot will make a warmer brown. The iron from the pots used during this period "sadden" the resulting color (that was the term used) and make the resulting color cooler and greyer. I process sheep's wool, dye and spin it and have experimented with easy to obtain natural dyes. BTW, beet is not colorfast.
@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 taught my husband to make walnut dye by having him mix the hulls in with the oak leaves and bark I was having him boil up to make tannin. He wanted me to teach him to make leather without using a chemical tan. He did all the work as I told him day by day, and ended up with a beautiful, supple deerskin dyed a deep, dark brown.
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.
I made some just a month ago from the tree in my yard, super dark!!!! Also, show more cooking, gardening, and maybe cookware stuff (like the earthen oven)
We use this fruit dye (long cooked fruits, not the tasty nuts, in french Brou de Noix) to colour our beams. After several layers, we finish with pure line oil. It makes a dark colour, well protecting the wood. Gives the house quite an authentic ambiance.
The same recipe can be used to give cheap gun stocks a nicer look.
Added note-the “gall” (insect that lives in the walnut), is used to make ink (without the added gum arabic)
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
My daughter and I did a big natural dyeing project a couple of years ago. It's amazing what a nice variety of colors are available from roadside plants, although most that we worked with are very interesting in how they are not color-fast. The most dramatic is pokeweed berries, which produce a bright magenta that fades in weeks to a sort of khaki. Turmeric (obviously not a roadside weed) requires a tiny amount to produce an orangey gold, which I got to fade to pale yellow in two days of summer sunshine.
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 UA-cam 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.
The black walnut tree was always my favorite in Ohio, and I love the smell of the green hulls before they start to decay. You can do so much with the walnut tree, Dave Canterbury has a great video on its many uses.
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
In your neck of the woods look for Phaeolus schweienitzii, the pine dye polypore mushroom. You'll find it around pines and other conifers where it is kinda sandy and more open. I used to sell it. You can get 20-30 ponds at a time pretty easy if you find it. You can look now for the dead ones from late summer. It will return perennially. Gives yellows or reds depending on mordant. Red spalts wood naturally.
The iron addition mentioned may be ferric acetate, from cleaning rust off iron using vinegar, it will bind with the phenolic compounds that make the brown colour to form a permanent black or dark brown in much the same way as iron gall ink works.
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
A tip with dying the hanks of yarn - move the tie bands a bit and re-dip, stops little patches of yarn which are lighter than the rest. Otherwise there is a gradient of colour depth which might be just what you want in your wooly jumper or socks, but might not be either. Love this episode, I've long been wanting to ask for more about the women's work and how they got on for fabrics. Thanks Townsends.
Miss the sweet smell of fall in the Midwest. Walnut and oak tannins with the moist fall air. But really, folks back up then would trade ten walnut brown cloths for one bright colored print.
When I moved out of Florida and finally identified black walnuts, it was due to the squirrels. They LOVE the nuts and would all turn a red-brown from nose to toes from getting them open. Once I learned how to open them myself, I was amazed how strong a squirrel's teeth must be. These are practically ironclad!
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.
I dyed a haversack by rubbing it with walnut husks. Forgot to wear gloves. Stained my hands brown for three weeks.
My parents had a small walnut orchard when I was a kid. In mid-October we would go collect the walnuts: father would climb in each tree and shake them, us kids were collecting the fallen walnuts (in shell) off the ground. Oh the dark brown stains we'd end up with on the hands. And they were fairly persistent too, it took several days of constant washing to get them off.
Your joy for this way of life is infectious. Oh how I long for the days of old. Thank you for helping us remember to be grateful for the simple things in life.
This was so good. Quite an interesting process for dying fabrics. The cabin looks so nice, with the autumn colours on the trees, in the background. Cheers!
Wow! As a professional yarn dyer, this was a delightful crossing of all of my interests. I have a jar of oak galls my husband has been collecting for me ready to go for some natural dyeing. Thank you for this lovely video and showing people the fascinating art of dyeing!
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!
I left about 5 dozen Black Walnuts in a tub this past fall till they got good and rotten, then I peeled the husks off, put them in a study cardboard box with a mixture of soil and wood shavings, and buried them about two feet down over the winter. Then I dug them up as soon as the frost ended, and put them in a tub with soil over them. Just about all of them sprouted, I planted a bunch of them and gave a bunch of them away. Great Video Townsends! I love working with Black Walnut!
@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!
It'd be cool to see Jon try dyeing with other fruits and vegetables and stuff
Beetroot produces a beautiful dye.
Avocado pit gives you a pink.
Walnut trees are great. In south America we call them Nogales as for the plural form and Nogal for the singular form, it's a common choice for the leather craftsman here to dye leather, at least in Argentina we have plenty of different kinds of leather craftsman, we have talabarteros, who's are specialist in Horse saddles and all the associated with horse riding, we have sogueros who are specialist in knots, weaving and creating whips with leather, they do pretty intricate and ornate stuff with that, its mainly small stuff they do, and regular utilitarian stuff or clothes are made by artesanos, every type of craft is heavily influenced by the gaucho culture too. And walnuts are common enough, at least way more common than the pecan nut tree that was actually brought up from the US and grows fine here but is not a native species. And to be honest i don't believe the walnut tree is a native species either lol.
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!!
Seventeen years ago I ordered patterns for fall-front trousers, and 1830s vest from Townsends. We made the garments from white cotton fabric, then dyed them as you described. My wife set the dye with a vinegar rinse. They have maintained their color well and are very comfortable. Thanks for the entire homestead series.
Oh I love this one! You sure bring back memories. We had 3 large, mature walnut trees near us when I was child and the swing was hung up off one of them. I was scrubbed within an inch of my life once for running around barefoot on the "slips" that had been rotting underneath the tree. Didn't need anything to set that dye ... I was walnut colored up to my ankles for a few weeks. :-)
Welcome to my world. I do historical handspinning over at spinningthepast.
Nice to meet you!
It would be fun if you were featured on a video with him!
Growing up on a old Pennsylvania Dutch farm that was my foster home, I was taught by my foster father Jim how to collect the walnuts, and crack them, and also how to make the deep walnut stain for wood. I love the smell of the green walnuts so fresh and zingy! He also taught me how to grow the trees from seed,. I live in the city now far away from the farm and this brought back those wonderful memories, and the torn gloves and walking around for weeks with green brown black finger tips! lol but the shells too were the best when smoking meats! I never thought of using them as a cloth or wool dye! what a amazing plant! Thanks so much for sharing! :)
Ah, black walnuts. We had a black walnut tree in our backyard when I was a kid. Me and my siblings would call the fruit "stink bombs" because the smell would get worse as they rotted on the ground. We'd pelt each other with them, lol. We didn't even realize they were walnuts at the time.
This is so cool! I have a BS degree in Fashion Design. In my college weaving class, we did a natural dye workshop where we met at a park and cooked up dyes using onion skins, cochineal beetles, cabbage, Queen Anne’s lace, and other plants to dye wool yarns that we later used in a weaving project. I wish we had used walnuts. I love that brown color. It never occurred to me to over-dye fabric that’s already printed. That looks amazing!
I've been dyeing for a video like this. My mom used to dye our school uniform pants growing up.
When I was a teenager I made ink from the walnut hulls to use is a goose quill pen. Added denatured alcohol to prevent mould.
Hi Jon just this minute reading about yourself on Reddit, Ask Reddit sub. The topic is which you tuber would be really friendly in real life. Your getting alot of love. Well done Sir.
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.
Neat! I've done these little dye projects before, even using the boiled wood of the Hedge tree to make yellow dye! That's always a fun one as well :)
Osage orange.
@@turdferguson2982 Yep that's another name for it.
The chemical that walnuts produce is called Juglone... named after the genus: Juglans (Juglans nigra is the black walnut). It is found in every part of the plant, from the roots to the leaves, but is found especially abundant in the fruit.
I grew up eating black walnuts, some local ice cream parlors make great ice cream with the nuts. Super expensive though to buy the nut meat though... we always just processed them in house as it were (or just run over the nuts with your car to remove the husk lol).
But the wood is also a great product. It is easily the most expensive (if you get a good straight trunk over 10-15ft long) trees in the midwest baring gall oaks.
Juglone is also an insect repellent so that suggests that garments dyed with it could potentially be resistant to insect damage.
In our neighborhood all the kids liked throwing these walnuts and playing with them. We all had brown fingers and our parents would say "Just don't get it on your clothes! It doesn't come out of clothes!". 🤣
When walnuts are green, they're good for medicinal uses, too. When my husband and I were first dating, we went riding horses one day. He noticed I had a ring worm on back of my neck. (roommate's cat 🙄) I'd been treating with prescription cream but it didn't seem to be doing much good. Husband got a green walnut, cut a slice off the hull and gently rubbed it on the infected area. The only thing he forgot to tell me was NOT to cover it or to get it in sunlight. 🙄 First, I had to put up my long hair in a ponytail. Then, we had to change our riding route to a heavily wooded (shady) area. But, within 3 days ringworm way gone. ...leaving a slightly lighter area of skin that persists to this day. (he forgot to tell me that, too)
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.
I absolutely love the blue cloth after it's dyed. It added such a richness to the cloth.
This wasa great video. Thank you!
Natural dyer here. Yes, everything Townsends says is true. And if you add a little iron to the pot (or use a iron pot), you'll get a brown so dark it's almost black.
What he doesn't say is that the walnut hull sludge is FOUL. Smells like a sewer made love to a skunk.
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?
When Kentucky was first being explored. The woods were old growth with a very dense canopy. Black is considered a very poor camouflage but in very dense, dark woods such as pre-civilized Kentucky, black is the best choice. None other than Daniel Boone was famous for having the blackest of buckskin. But he took the secret of dying jet black buckskin to the grave with him.
I didn’t know that! Thanks🐝🤗❤️
Right on time! I have 2 baskets and they're still falling! When I was 9 my best friend was 73. I learned a lot. You ever hear of mixing it with pine sap? Mr. Emmett used it on wood and canvas
People in town are always glad to have you pick up walnuts in their yard. I often pick up a few on the street, but when people notice what you are doing, they invite you to pick further in their yards.
Thanks for the expirmentation and clear direction - I love that you read out the recipes and notations from a hundred years ago as if they just posted their findings on social media - time is nothing when it comes to the written word
It's a *Dyeing* artform...
Had a gal who lived down the road from me was big into using natural dyes for her home spun wool and hand woven fabrics.
This was in the early 1970's
Hey Jon, you should do a limited run on those walnut dyed work shirts, I'd buy one!
That blue printed cloth would make a great waistcoat back now that it's been dyed, too. I'd like to see that.
Green Walnuts also come in handy for kids wanting to build a catapult or giant slingshot... (No, mom, I have NO IDEA how the barn got those brown spots on the siding...)
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? 😂
I grew up in a place where we had several black walnut trees and have had my hands stained many times. Although I never thought of it, I am not surprised the hulls could be used as a dye. Very interesting!
Very cool...Thanks for doing the video!
We have a 80' tall walnut tree in our yard along with many maples, it is an amazing tree and we only get a heavy harvest of nuts every other year! Much to the chagrin of our squirrel population.
Not sure I will ever dye anything but good to know we could!
Have a great day.
Mike 🇨🇦🍁👍
There were walnut trees in my grandmother's backyard, where I used to play in the seventies. I remember playing with the walnuts and getting my hands stained brown.
I’m the Museum Educator at the Agricultural History Farm Park in Montgomery County. We have black walnut trees everywhere. This is very helpful to add to my programming!
My dad and uncle own some land right up against the Great Smoky Mountains National Park by Gatlinburg. I've been running around there my entire life. Until a few years ago when she passed, it was Grandma's property, and before her, my great-grandparents had their hand built home and a 1 room school house converted to a small grocery store in the 50's next to it.
There's a black walnut tree outside the house.
We've been twisting our ankles on these damn things for generations.
I came to your channel to find how black walnuts were harvested and processed in bygone eras, but was surprised you don't seem to have such a video.
This vid brings back childhood memories of picking up walnuts in neighboring orchards for spending money as a young child. Hands and knees would become stained....Dad finally bought us kids pooper scoopers to prevent this...lol!!
Loved the results on the patterned fabrics, especially the blue one!
The wood is valuable as a hardwood for furniture or veneer.
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
Fun fact: black walnut juice can also be used to make a forced patina on steel, which helps protect the metal. Five or six years ago, I heard of the technique from some survival channel or other on UA-cam, and decided to try it with a hatchet I had recently restored from a rusty woodshed. It resulted in a very attractive "blue" (think slate or gunmetal colour) tone to the metal, which has received compliments and interest.
I'm no chemist, but I suspect that there are oils in the walnut husks, and also something that creates a darker oxidation layer to stave off more invasive rust. Whatever the case, the hatchet still looks great, and has never had another fleck of orangey rust, despite exposure to inclement weather on a number of backwoods trips.
Fun fact #2: The nuts themselves are edible. Remove the husks (which contain bitter tannins that will seep through the shell) and thoroughly wash the shelled nuts. I use a bucket and hose, but I once knew an old-timer who used a discarded, tumbler-style washing machine. When most (the more, the better) of the black gunk has been removed, allow to dry for a week or two. This will cause the meat inside the nut to shrink, and be less difficult to extract. I say "less difficult" because it's still a chore to individually hammer each nut - placing it on the broadest side and striking the narrow tip for best results - and then extracting the meat.
After all that work, there's not a ton of food to show for it - but it's calorically-dense and keeps well (and requires basically zero care the rest of the year), so I can see why it would appeal, back in the day. The nuts themselves have a rather more fruity flavour than the English walnuts one typically gets at the grocery store, and a softer mouth-feel. Quite nice in desserts like Christmas breads, fudge and on top of apple crumble. I recommend giving them a try - though I admit the hassle keeps me from going out of my way to acquire them most of the time.
I remember reading a recipe for ink many years ago when I was playing with dip pens. It was much the same as one of these dye recipes; walnut husks and some iron let sit for some time and then filtered.
As a kid my dad took me walnut hunting every October here in West Virginia. After shucking them we payed then on old metal bed frames layered with cardboard in the garage ceiling. Two weeks before thanksgiving we cracked them and started making black walnut fudge and nut rolls for the holidays. This has brought back many memories from those days. Thank you
I walked the Freedom Trail in Boston Wednesday last, immersing myself in the late 17th and 18th century. I thought of Townsend’s the entire time, and regret I was unable to visit you in Indiana as I was passing by.
We have an English walnut tree in our yard and this would definitely work well with them too. It's crazy how quickly it will dye your hands orange when de-husking them.
When I was around 13 years old I hunted a lot of squirrels in the woods behind our home. There was an old walnut tree next to my grandfathers tin roofed barn near the house and I just had to listen for the sounds of walnuts falling on that tin roof to know when dinner was in the tree.
You can get brown out of coffee and tea. Or if you want to look in nature you can use acorns and oak galls. There are any number of colors you can get from nature that you might be able to find on the homestead. You can get blue from blackberries with an iron mordant. Or pink from birch, gray with the iron mordant. Or greens from ivy. Just depends on what's available around the homestead. You just have to look around and experiment.
Incredible work as always. Love the history and practices involved in extracting these natural dyes. Would love to see more natural dye content.
Last year, I very innocently opened a black walnut husk with my fingers to get to the nut inside and my fingers and nails stayed brown for over a week. It would make for a great substitute for henna!
I was feeling really stressed till I watched this. Something about what you guys do is relaxing . Thank you Townsends
I *LOVED* this. These resourcing videos are my favorite. More, please! ❤
The fresh walnut leaves soaked for several weeks in rum make a great Moskito repellent and a soothing solution on any bug bite.
Hi from Syracuse NY brother and thank you for sharing your thoughts and adventures in 1754 times and everyone else
I needed this when I was a child. I just discovered your channel and it's amazing. So calming and informative and you have a pleasant voice and cadence.
This is very informative!
I like to eat the nuts but here where we live walnut trees all over. Especially our neighbors yards which affects my garden
I've have to move something every few years. Doesn't help when the squirrels keep 'planting' them. Ugh.
Those fabrics turned out beautiful!!
Wow, this is pretty neat. Could you make a video about the different kinds of dye and colors that can be made from natural ingredients? Or maybe about the dyeing trade on the frontier?
We had two enormous black walnut trees in our yard when I was a kid. Every Autumn, the squirrels in our yard all got stained paws, chins, chests, and mouths from the walnut husks. Many stain spots appeared on the sidewalks, too. The sound of a walnut falling through leaves and twigs always got our attention - especially if we were under the tree. A favorite set of memories, indeed.
One of my favorite channels. Thank you.
We have walnut trees all over the place here in PA, black walnut, both out in the woods and fields, and in town. When I read about using the husk for dyeing, I started wondered about collecting them and experimenting with dyeing. Haven't tried it yet, though.
We have a lot of English walnuts where I live in Utah, and I've been meaning to use a bunch of husks to make dye. This is inspiring me to follow through.
That blue cloth turned out so nice!
thank you for uploading, jon. it really helps people like me who just need a break from life :)
I accidentally turned my hands jet black for 2 weeks handling the fruit while harvesting the nuts. Everyone at work had great fun with that lol
We have walnut trees galore in Kentucky and my mother was always gathering them.
Harry Marinakis is working on a book (its apparently at manuscript stage) cataloging the results of various even older (700-1600) dying techniques on leather. He recreated and photographed over 100 recipes from 16 manuscripts on the subject (skipping those that involved hazardous stuff like lead or arsenic). Among his notes are 1: wear rubber gloves when handling walnut dye 2: walnut dye can be darkened with vinigroon
I watched a video recently where a guy dyed some surplus ACU uniform items with walnut dye. Regular ACU is a pretty terrible camouflage pattern, but the addition of the dark brown dye really helped, and it worked on everything but the plastic zipper. It even dyed the nylon velcro.
I recently got into dip pen writing, and one of the inks commonly used is walnut ink, which writes very well and produces beautiful sepia tones on paper.
I grew up with a yard full of walnut trees , went by the old house this summer ... all gone now
You can get various shades of brown yarn (tan, camel, dark brown, etc) to knit or crochet with to make beautiful ski sweaters and hats. Just leave it in for different lengths of time, as Jon explained.
I dyed my traps with walnut hulls when I was a kid. One year we had a real bad drought and the ground was like cement. I stepped out on the porch onto a small carpet by the door and almost fell. The squirrels had a hard time digging so they just shoved the walnuts under the carpet. Memories. On a side note, walnut trees in a pasture will make cows sick if they eat the grass around the trees.
i am very thankful that i found this channel. an excellent host and content makes it almost addicting. keep up the good work! history must be taught because it is being forgotten, especially in america.
I use deer antler and bone for several craft and practical purposes and have found walnuts make a wonderful stain for knife handles, belt buckles, beads, etc.
We had walnut trees when I was a kid. Many times my hands would end up that same shade when we'd harvest those delicious walnuts.
Excellent video. I've been a spinner/dyer since 1986. Love dyeing with walnuts.
Just subscribed . I live in Eastern side of South Africa where they grow pecan nut trees . I got a bucket of the shells , and dyed my hand spun wool . It looked a bit wishy washy light brown , so added a few handfuls of rusty iron . It changed the colour so beautifully . Almost a shimmered medium brown . So , pecans can do wonders as well . Now going to watch more of your videos 🌼