I have a few flightsuits, non-issued, in aerospace blue. I am trying to bring them to the “normal” GB coloration, either grey, beige or black.
Problem is, they don’t cooperate.
I got some colour stripper from tintex (they sell textile dye) - 2 packs in boiling water for a little more then 10 minutes on one flightsuit didn’t alter the colour at all.
Anyone had that problem before?
are there any solutions?
nobody else tried to strip colours on their flightsuits?
I can’t believe it.
Mars,
Been out for the weekend and as such not reading the boards. Anyways, on to your question…
First of all, most of the members here use Rit color remover and not the Tintex so they cannot speak from experience with that particular brand.
Secondly, those that I have seen with the blue uniforms are using them as they are (no color alteration). Those of us who have removed dye from a uniform generally do the khaki or black and again, I can write all day about how my khaki uniforms changed color but the simple fact of the matter is that the uniforms I’ve worked with have not been blue. I cannot tell you how the blue is going to lose its color or what it will look like.
If you are willing to ignore the discrepancies and take my experience from a non blue uniform with Rit color remover, I can tell you that not all of the color is going to come out. Also, soaking the uniform for 10 minutes probably won’t do much either. These uniforms generally contain synthetic materials whose dyes are very resilient to color remover and will be destroyed with strong concentrations of bleach. The times I’ve done my uniforms I’ve left them in the water and color remover for an hour. Be prepared when you do get some color to come out to be faced with a completely different color. Different companies seem to have different dye recipes for the same color. For example my khaki flight suit turned yellow with color remover. A khaki jacket (men’s) that I put in color remover turned light pink. Same color, but different companies and therefore different results. Eric mentioned that his khaki uniform had a lot of orange in it. Since you list black as one of the colors you are shooting for, I see no reason to stress with the color remover.
I hope this helps in some way or another. Good luck!
Thanks a lot for your info.
I can’t locate RIT anywhere here in Canada, but I feel they might all be similar.
The instructions states 10-to-15 minutes with one pack, I doubled that and kept water boiling for 10 minutes with no alterations in colours whatsoever. I haven’t located black dye yet to try, and I’d prefer being able to dye to beige/khaki, but its on my list of things to try. Should I use something else then colour remover? maybe bleach? Amonia?
However, I feel if there is a lot of synthetics in the fabric and I can’t colour strip, won’t I have problems dying it?
Maybe I’ll simply keep it blue and get an additionnal khakis suit.
I’d like to know, what’s people reaction to a blue suited ghostbusters? any comments?
Mars,
What you want to avoid when using bleach with these uniforms is using it in strong concentrations. Jairus (Teliwhy) posted his charcoal grey uniform recipe in which he used 1/2 cup bleach in the washer to do a bit of color stripping. On a few of my other uniforms I used some diluted bleach in the washer to remove the dye when I was out of color remover. However I cannot guarantee what this will ultimately do to the fabric in the long run as I started from scratch with two new uniforms and gave the old ones away to Goodwill sans patches. I’ve also read that hydrogen peroxide and ammonia can be used to color strip, but I’d look on the web for recipes and neutralizing techniques before using those methods as well as their effects on synthetics.
One thing you might be able to do is turn the uniform into a charcoal grey by using a low concentration of black dye. On Rit’s website, the ingredients they list to turn a white garment into charcoal grey is royal blue and black. Since you have the blue suit, perhaps a small amount of black diluted in enough water will give you charcoal grey. If it didn’t work out, the worst you would end up with is a black suit. I wouldn’t hope too much for a grey-khaki suit since it is such a light color and the blue seems pretty dark.
Best of luck to you whatever you decide to do. As I said, I’m sorry I can’t give you more pointers but I’ve not messed with the blue suits at all so the only thing I can offer is my opinion based on other things I’ve read and experienced.
Thanks a lot for this info.
I’ll try my hand at getting a charcoal grey from the blue. Maybe It’ll work, maybe I’ll get black suit… I could in theory try to colour strip after if all fails.
Here’s the result of my experimentations so far… not very conclusive.
I tried to dye both flightsuits with 2 packs of dye, one beige, one brown, in HOT water, for about 45 minutes, with little to no visible difference.
Then I tried 5 packs of black dye - first visible result ever… the flights suits changed colorations - they both are poly-cotton but ended up with 2 shades of royal/marine blue.
I did something that I should have done a while ago: doing more research on polyester/cotton mix dyeing techniques.
The main problem we have, and I knew that, is that the polyester (synthetic fiber) in the poly-cotton twill won’t accept dye like cotton (natural fabric) does.
Here’s some info on the topic:
they point out to using disperse dyes, as opposed to fiber reactive dyes, and to this site:
they also talked about fabric paint.
Overall, I already spent about 15 to 20$ worth of dye trying to get my flightsuit coloured in a more GBesque colour, with little to no result.
I would start to recommend anyone to stay away from dying their flightsuit, unless there is something special about it or you just can’t get your own size (■■-small anyone?) - the main matter is how money-efficient would it be if you need to spend about 30-to-40$ in dye packages if you can get a brand new flightsuit online for about the same?
Unless someone can prove me that there’s a good way to dye poly-cotton suits…