cdc dying?

[greyhoundgirl]

Hi all
i'm looking to move on a little from my buzzers and basic nymphs...looking at buying cdc for drys/emergers. some is dyed and rest natural. can you explain to me what dying entails? is it cost efective?
thanks
grey

[weight_forward]

I've never dyed CDC but have recently started doing other feathers and the process is pretty easy, Midlander did a great SBS here. The principles for CDC would be the same although you could do it in a glass jar in a microwave.

Cost effective? probably not but then what is cost effective about fly tying , each dye colour will cost €3-4 which would buy a couple of packets of dyed CDC. A pot of dye will do a lot of feathers though, for a 1 gram bag of CDC you'd probably need about 1/4 teaspoon of dye. As CDC is quite greasy I would think you would need synthrapol to soak the feathers in as it's much better than washing up liquid.

[shortea]

ive never tried dying cdc -normally you remove grease/oils so that the dye takes in other materials but wouldnt this affect the floating properties of cdc

Nick

[HOOK]

Hello grey, in order to keep the natural oils in the feather could you use a Pantone Pen as a trial rather than dying, but most fishers use the natural feather when tying.

Robbie

[green pete]

Hi all,
I have dyed some cdc over the years and its surely not cost effective but is good to be able to do your own. the best tip I can give is to put the cdc in a stocking or the foot end of tights this will stop all the cdc going over the place when dying or drying. But its so worth having several colours I use mountians of cdc every year.

[spidersplus]

Grey,

Dying your own CDC is more trouble than its worth. You need to start with white plumes and the cleaning and drying takes forever - plus the best way to get a good depth of colour is to dye in a cold solution - some colours take a few days to penetrate the feathers.

Stick with the professionally dyed feathers from a company such as here:

SWISSCDC finest CDC feathers and cdc products - CDC feathers - SWISSCDC - finest feathers for you

Kind regards

[greyhoundgirl]

Thanks all for your responses - the dyeing, i don't think, is for me after all Think i'll stick with bought - thanks to Spidersplus for the link.
best
grey

[arkle]

There is a chapter on dyeing c.d.c. in Leon Links book, it's very involved & can take a week or so as the material is very susceptible to heat damage so need to be checked frequently.