Can you dye sails?

P

prv

Well-Known Member
Joined
29 Nov 2009
Messages
37,358
Location
Southampton
Visit site
Idle thought prompted by another thread - can you dye polyester sails? Specifically a storm jib. Ours (with the new boat) is white, but orange does seem more sensible. I've been lookout on a ship before and spotted a yacht hove to under storm jib in a Force 9 - they had an orange jib and I doubt I've have seen them if it had been white. Not going to expend much effort or money on this, but if it turns out you get reasonable results running them through the Hotpoint with a sachet of Dylon, then I might do so.

Cheers,

Pete
 
I worked as an R&D chemist for ICI and then Zeneca before moving into IT. I should know this but it was a VERY long time ago and I worked with fibre reactive dyes such as PROCION. I did work in other areas, in fact I suspect that processes I developed are still being used to produce cyan printer inks for ink-jet printers (accidental diversion from dye production when ink-jets became feasible).

I think you'd need a Disperse dye and from memory that would require quite a bit of heat to fix the dye. I don't think a Vat dye would be a great idea (you make an intermediate leuco form, so more fiddly). Actually, memory is so faded that I can't remember the difference between Disperse & Vat (Ah wait, one is a fine physical dispersion and other dissolves into the material). Fibre reactives certainly wouldn't work well as they need an amino or hydroxyl group to latch on to.

Not certain what's in Dylon as I wasn't every involved in application side (other than theoretical for in-house testing). I think it used to be mainly fibre-reactives so good for natural fibre but would only stain polyester (lighter colour and prone to leeching out again).

Bottom line, I think it would be very messy, you'd need a very large tub and the heat involved would damage the sail. Perhaps someone else can provide more recent data from this century. :D

If you decide to go for sails made from natural materials then I can probable still remember how to make then let alone how to apply them. Not really much use though unless you want sails to stretch, rot, etc.
 
Last edited:
We tried dyeing sails ,not very successfull.If you have access to a very large pressure cooker.you might manage it.!
Best solution is to spraypaint the sail .Lots of sails are branded with logos this way.
Flexible vinyl coatings are best.
Cindy
 
Cheers. Since posting I had a look at the Dylon website and they said it doesn't work on polyester. Surprising really, as I always thought man-made carpets stained more easily and permanently than wool ones, but hey-ho.

Pete
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top