. . . how did you dye the APC props? Did you use Ritz dye and do it like we dye our canopies but a little longer? Or......? ..... TIA for your ans.
Rudy --
I stole the prop dying idea from Jimmy Welch, who is a darned innovative guy! Jimmy had been playing around with making 3 blade CF props, but I was surprised to see what appeared to be a CF two blade, a clone of the APC 12.25 x 3.25, on one of his planes. Turns out, it was no clone, but a dyed APC! Jimmy proceeded to tell me about dying APCs.
It is pretty simple, actually. Buy
Rit (not Ritz, those are crackers
) liquid dye, and follow the directions! Jimmy says the salt is the key to permanence.
The
Rit directions are for people dying pounds and washer loads of things. I found about 3 quarts of water covers a batch of props in a big skillet, so figured out these proportions – scaled down from
Rit large batch directions:
1 oz dye
2 tbsp salt
3 quarts of water
I kept the skillet on the burner for ½ hour after it started to simmer, and stirred the whole time. This was my first try, so I can’t say what I did was right. The dye seems deep enough scratching the color off doesn’t seem a problem. The dye penetrates pretty well, so somebody (like John Rakes) should try purple.
There was some rice in the salt. I now have some of the blackest, weirdest looking rice ever seen.
Larry FulwiderEdit: PS: Thanks, all, for the related tips on nozzles. I didn't know about the fan shaped nozzles, for example.