Spyderco Forums

Looks good to me - almost like a micarta.

Claim it as intentional.

I love the color.

Looks great man, what's the beef! Keep it and adjust your expectations! I guess the lesson is that this RIT dying business is somewhat unpredictable and unless you have experience with a particular batch of G10, you are gonna have to just cross your fingers and run with it.

I did the RIT dye thing on a digital camo PM2 just like the one above, and it came out ... just like the one above (my knife's brother has been found!). I am not sure I would go through all of that again though. I completely disassembled the knife, which was darn tricky since Spyderco had swaged the lanyard tube into the G10. It was manageable with care, but I would just boil the whole knife if I had it to do again. I suppose dying a knife is something everyone should do at least once.

Looks great. Should we request a denim blue Seki run soon?!

animportant wrote:Looks great. Should we request a denim blue Seki run soon?!

Absolutely not! I want my accidental denim blue Dragonfly to be unique! :D

It really does look great. That is almost exactly what I want to do someday with my yellow FRN. Of course it is probably not going to work when starting with yellow.

FYI, RIT makes s Synthetic dye. Wonder if it would work better on FRN scales?
If I were to dye my yellow Dragonfly Salt with blue RIT, would it turn blue or would it turn green? Is it like mixing paint or does the dye cover the original color?

The trials and tribulations of dying scales....

This time I used Rit Dye More for synthetic materials. These scales were in the solution for no more than 2 minutes. They're a little darker than I planned haha.

Sharp Guy wrote:The trials and tribulations of dying scales....

This time I used Rit Dye More for synthetic materials. These scales were in the solution for no more than 2 minutes. They're a little darker than I planned haha.

Hey, that looks pretty darned good!

Slumblor wrote:Hey, that looks pretty darned good!

Thanks. It looks much better in the daylight than it does indoors. Inside it looks almost black. It's definitely more practical for me than the original scales. Now I can use it at work and not worry about it looking filthy.

Wow, 2 minutes did that? I'll have to try the synthetic materials Rit next time. I like instant gratification. Looks great!

Nice shade of gray.

Spydersense wrote:Wow, 2 minutes did that? I'll have to try the synthetic materials Rit next time. I like instant gratification. Looks great!

The bottle says Frost Grey. My goal was to get them as close to the grey on the PM2 Cruwear as possible. I figured I'd have to leave 'em in for at least 15 min to achieve that. I thought I was being over anxious when I decided to take a look after only 2 min. Surprise!!! They're almost black! :eek: Dang! I already have a black P3. They did lighten up a little after I rinsed and dried them but still way darker than I wanted. Like it or not they're charcoal grey now.

For those who are interested, I dyed my CPM Cruwear Para 3 today. It took roughly 15 minutes to achieve this hue using the Racing Red RITMore dye. I only used about 1 oz of the 7 oz bottle with just enough water to cover my scales, and the remainder of what I used would be sufficient for dying at least one more item. My first lesson was that a little goes a long way.





Another interesting thing is that the rough surfaces took the dye much better than the smooth surfaces. It came out well, tho, since the smooth surfaces are hidden.

The last thing I noticed was that at first when I didn't boil the solution the dye only penetrated very lightly. Once I simmered the concoction and flipped the item regularly, the dye really took.

I hope this helps someone's decisions as previous discussions helped mine.

That looks fantastic. It makes me wish most of my scales weren't black, so I could try some of these colors. I need more yellow Salts.

Thanks Frank. I intentionally avoid black knives these days, so I now have 11 Spydercos, and only two of them are black. It's convenient that sprints and exclusives are colorful, since I'm not interested in regular production models usually.

I kinda wish more regular production knives had lighter colored G10 more often. That would open up coloring options on non-limited edition knives.

attila wrote:For those who are interested, I dyed my CPM Cruwear Para 3 today. It took roughly 15 minutes to achieve this hue using the Racing Red RITMore dye. I only used about 1 oz of the 7 oz bottle with just enough water to cover my scales, and the remainder of what I used would be sufficient for dying at least one more item. My first lesson was that a little goes a long way.





Another interesting thing is that the rough surfaces took the dye much better than the smooth surfaces. It came out well, tho, since the smooth surfaces are hidden.

The last thing I noticed was that at first when I didn't boil the solution the dye only penetrated very lightly. Once I simmered the concoction and flipped the item regularly, the dye really took.

I hope this helps someone's decisions as previous discussions helped mine.

That looks great. How close is the final outcome to the color on the bottle of dye? What was your mixture of water/vinegar/dye? Did the scales rest on the bottom of the pot, or were they suspended?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

So, for someone who is new to DIY dye possibilities, I just soak it in fabric dye?

If so, I'm getting that DF2 Salt I wanted in yellow and giving it a red coat next pay check!!

I haven't done it yet, but it looks just that easy. There are some how to videos on youtube.

mad german wrote:

attila wrote:For those who are interested, I dyed my CPM Cruwear Para 3 today. It took roughly 15 minutes to achieve this hue using the Racing Red RIT DyeMore dye. I only used about 1 oz of the 7 oz bottle with just enough water to cover my scales, and the remainder of what I used would be sufficient for dying at least one more item. My first lesson was that a little goes a long way.





Another interesting thing is that the rough surfaces took the dye much better than the smooth surfaces. It came out well, tho, since the smooth surfaces are hidden.

The last thing I noticed was that at first when I didn't boil the solution the dye only penetrated very lightly. Once I simmered the concoction and flipped the item regularly, the dye really took.

I hope this helps someone's decisions as previous discussions helped mine.

That looks great. How close is the final outcome to the color on the bottle of dye? What was your mixture of water/vinegar/dye? Did the scales rest on the bottom of the pot, or were they suspended?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

With regard to the color vs the bottle, here are two pictures to show the difference in artificial light since the sun is hiding at the moment:




Using the synthetic-fabric dye, I aimed to use only about an 1/7th of the bottle (~1 oz) and only added enough Brita filtered water to cover the part while simmering (<2 cups total liquid).

When I dyed the scales, I didn't disassemble the G10 from the stainless liners or lanyard tube because of the flaring of the tube. Coupled with the small liquid volume I chose to use, I simply flipped the scales every 30-60 seconds while simmering to keep the dying even.

I could easily have suspended them if I had used the whole bottle of dye, but then I'd have wasted the vast majority of the dye on one knife. I figured there was a more frugal approach, and it seems to have worked out alright.

I hope this is clear enough to help your project!