#4899651
So yeah, I got a white belt and some Pearl Grey, washed out my metal sink with soap and rinsed it good with water. Got some water boiling and the hottest i could from the tap, added the salt, the vinegar, the dye, the belt and mix it around for a few minutes.
I pull it out, it looks a bit Blue with a tiny bit of Grey, ok needs more time, give it a few more minutes.
I pull it out and.
It's a solid light Lavender with highlights of pink and the threads at the buckle are pink. :shock:
I let the hot dye water drain and run the cold to rinse and my sink is blue, not just like a hint of light blue, a fairly solid bright hot blue streaking ring, like a marker was involved.
I didn't get any pictures, I'm renting an apartment I was more concerned with "Is this coming off?", it did.
So, I've rinsed the belt out with detergent and water a couple times, threw in the closest thing I have to bleach, which is a cleaner with bleach and now it is lighter but still unarguably Lavender with pink highlights.

It isn't dry yet so maybe it will shift towards Grey as it does but those pink tones aren't going anywhere.
The hell happened here?
#4900133
here's my uniform belt dye job instructions / steps ->
I premixed the pearl grey powdered RiT Dye with only boiling water (2 cups i think) and a cup of salt and l stirred it to make sure all the salt was dissolved, never used vinegar at all in the mix.

I had the belt presoaking in near-boiling HOT water for like 10 minutes, with a tiny dot of hand soap, making sure the belt was clean of any factory sealants or whatever and was wet all the way through. . I stirred it and rinsed the soap off it with medium warm water.

The belt was then added to 5 gallons of near boiling water (in a bucket) and I added the premixed dye liquid I made and stirred near constantly for like 15 minutes and took it out after the allotted ~15 minutes had passed. IT LOOKED DARK!

BUT! The belt then got rinsed in near boiling water until it ran clean, then rinsed in slightly cooler hot water, hot water, warm, luke warm, slightly cold, as cold as I could make my faucet. Set the color real real well as a 'darker than I wanted but very grey, grey'.

I then wiped off the metal hardware on the belt and dried it the best I could using an electric fan blowing on it while it was hanging (took like 6 to 8 hours).

After it was dry it was noticeably lighter than it was before, but still a bit too dark. . so then I machine washed it twice in warm water without detergent (with my flight suit)and the I washed it again once in cold water with a bit of laundry detergent.

It came out a nice faded grey color after it was dry again. . Goodluck dude!

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Last edited by bworld on October 26th, 2017, 1:16 pm, edited 4 times in total.
#4900150
bworld wrote: It came out a nice faded grey color after it was dry again. . Goodluck dude!

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Looks good, I took the dye back to Walmart that night and traded it in for the powdered black and color remover, ended up the same price as the liquid Pearl Grey.
Wanted to go with the Charcoal Grey as I needed to go with a darker dye to cover any remnants of the first dye but all they had was black.
Black was, less than ideal, but I figured out a decent method.

I soaked it in the color remover to get what dye i could out, actually got most of it...unfortunately was still a bit pink.
I mixed up the black and then dunked the belt in real fast a few times, 2 or 3, I forget but I did it pretty fast.
I then immediately rinsed it with hot water, it wasn't quite there, a bit uneven as well but I didn't want to risk dunking it in again and getting it too dark so I just kind of painted it on with my fingers and immediately rinsed it off.
By painting I mean that I dunked my fingers into the dye water, then quickly moved to the belt and spread it onto the belt in small sections, about 1-2 inches in length.
I did the "painting" a few times around, evening out the color where it was lighter, not the best solution but it worked well enough and let me even out the color without much risk.

Turned out..ok, it's not perfect, color is a bit uneven close up but you can't see it unles you're staring at it point blank.
It still has some lavender in it but it's now Grey with a slight Lavender tone instead of Lavender with a Grey tone, most of the Lavender might just be in my mind since I know what happened.
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One thing to note if you do use the "painting" method, put down a towel before hand...I didn't notice untill I was cleaning up but I had been dripping bits on the counter throughout and half my counter was now blue...had to scrub for half an hour to get the counters white again.

I should also clarify that I painted it on with my Gloved fingers.
#4900238
whoops! i fixed my image hosting haha

The belt looks good man, maybe add some weathering and those lines will hide themselves in the sharpie / acrylic paint you could use for weathering it. .
#4900241
Lines? You mean the unevenness in shade?
No, you can't see it unless your holding it to your face in good lighting. I did a pretty good job of blending.

There's been something weird going on with images in general on the board, not sure whats up, sometimes I see them, sometimes I don't. Same with videos.

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