The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Coloring Finishing And Painting Wood
Turkey-red and a few other related colors are still made from the roots of the madder plant, but the quantity produced has been greatly reduced since the discovery of cheap and practical methods of making coal-tar alizarine dyes. The objections to the vegetable madder colors are that they are not pure, and are not as clear and bright, even after the use of mordants, as are the synthetic alizarine dyes.
The old-time Avood-finishers often used madder colors for wood-stains and mixed them with other dyes, especially when they wished light-proof tones of red and mahogany. Madder was a favorite red color, and was very commonly found in formulae containing fustic and logwood. If madder colors are treated with the proper mordants, various tones of pink, red, yellow, purple, and even brown can be obtained.
Madder is reported to be the most important of all vegetable dyes sold on the market at present. The madder color that is most famous in history is known as Turkeyred.
80. Gallnuts.—To a limited extent blacks and some other colors have been made from gallnuts, also called nut galls. Several grades from Alleppo and China are still found on the market. The coloring-matter from nut-galls was occasionally used with other dyes in the stains used by wood-finishers until very recently.
81. Cutch, or catechu.—This astringent brown extract is made from various plants imported mostly from Africa, and the East and West Indies, and is a valuable material for making pleasing and popular colors. Borneo produces a good grade which is commonly obtainable. Cutch is still popular to some extent for dyeing silk, especially when it is combined with logwood. For use on cotton goods, it has been largely displaced by diamine, benzo, and Congo colors, some of which require after-treatments.
Cutch is a tannin dye that has sometimes been used in connection with potassium chromate, or similar salts, in making reddish-brown stains for wood.9
82. Fustic.—A tropical yellowwood tree produces this valuable yellow dye, which is still commonly obtainable in sticks; but the chips, formerly used, are sometimes not found on the American market. Fustic extract is quoted, and is used in combination with various other substances to produce several shades of yellow, and sometimes browns or reddish tones. At the present time fustic is used chiefly with logwood in the production of blacks. The yellow dye is not now extensively used alone, because it has been replaced by coal-tar dyes of greater purity, permanency, and brilliancy of hue.
83. Turmeric.—An East Indian Ginger-Plant produces a yellow dye, which is shipped from Bombay. The yellow coloring-matter, called turmeric, can be treated with various chemicals to produce shades of yellow, and even greenish, reddish, and brown tones. The colors are somewhat fugitive in light, and are not much used at present for any purpose.
