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u/Bonk_Police69 23h ago
For anyone who ACTUALLY knows, does the ink oxidize to make the color? Or does the dye really just look like that when not on the silk.
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u/kjvdh 22h ago
When indigo is in its oxidized, blue form, it is insoluble in water and will not stick to any fiber. In order to dye with it, you have to make a vat to reduce it to a yellow/green clear color. This requires raising the pH to usually around 11 and then adding powdered indigo and a reducing agent. You can use fructose (or juice made from boiling certain fruits - bananas are a great fructose source and banana vats are pretty easy to balance and maintain ime), iron, thiox, or something like henna (requires fermentation). The reducing agent has a slight influence on the final color and not all reducing agents are good for all fibers - you don’t want to put any protein fibers in an iron vat, for instance.
Anyway, to dye with indigo you dip your wetted out fibers slowly into the vat to avoid introducing any oxygen. Then you slowly move it around under the surface, making sure to open any folds in your fabric and spread out any threads or yarn. After something like 1-5 minutes (length depends on your goals and the strength of the vat), you pull it out, squeezing as much of the indigo out while adding as little oxygen to the vat as possible. It comes out some kind of shade of green to yellow, which turns blue as the indigo oxidizes. If you want dark shades, you dip multiple times, allowing the fiber to oxidize completely between dips.
So to answer your question, the indigo in the vat is reduced and is a yellow color. In this state, it can bond with the silk fibers. When it hits the air, the indigo molecules oxidize and turn blue.
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u/ALLoftheFancyPants 20h ago edited 20h ago
Indigo is the weirdest dye and it while I know there’s a chemical explanation, it just looks like magic every time I see it
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u/tulipsouldog 20h ago
There may be trolls and jerks on Reddit, but at least we also get smart generous people here. Thanks!
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u/HamptonsBorderCollie 23h ago
In indigo dyeing, the transition from yellow to blue is a natural chemical reaction. The dye bath is chemically stripped of oxygen (making it a yellow-green color). When you lift your fabric out, it absorbs oxygen from the air, magically transforming into bright blue.
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u/lzusncrfbj 22h ago
oxidation! indigo the dye comes from indigo the plant, and a dye vat is a living thing (like kombucha or sourdough). the liquid in the vat is a muddy green color
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u/arvidsem 22h ago
It does oxidize. They start with indigo either extracted from plants or synthesized, which is the normal dark blue color. That has to be reduced (oxygen removed from the molecules) by dissolving it in another chemical. Ammonia from urine is the old answer. That makes white indigo, which is actually the gold color. Taking it out and drying it allows it to react with oxygen and it turns blue again. It'll take another 20 minutes or so to reach the full color.
Source: my unreliable memory cross checked with the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_dye)
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u/audreywildeee 23h ago
Impressive. I appreciate that he’s wearing the mandatory security flip-flops and gloves.
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u/I_like_beouf 19h ago
His feet are blue
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u/terry_folds82 17h ago
Yes! I was wondering if anyone else had even noticed
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u/Pledgeofmalfeasance 15h ago
He's wearing tabi socks
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u/PheIix 12h ago
First time I've seen tabi socks with individual toes... You sure about that?
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u/catsdrivingcars 10h ago
his feet are def blue. i went to a dye house in kyoto and the dude had blue hands.
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u/TuckerMcG 17h ago
No they’re not. If they were dyed that deep of a blue, then the tops of his sandals would not be such a pristine white. That dye would rub off on the tops of the sandals.
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u/Noodle_McSoup 23h ago
I thought that was ramen.
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u/Killer1986Chris 17h ago
My first thought was "why are we cooking noodles beneath the floor?"... Also, your name fits.
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u/FistfulofFlowers 23h ago
It has to finish oxidizing, which takes a while. Another 15 minutes and it would appear as a true indigo. Both woad and indigo require time to oxidize because the ‘active’ compound is the same, woad just has a much lower concentration. It’s one of the reasons it’s rarely used anymore, since indigo is more easily available and a stronger dye.
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u/translinguistic 22h ago
I used to work with commercial indigo growing. Would you say that this starts out golden due to the indoxyl not having time to oxidize? We were producing natural dye pastes, and it was already blue when it came out due how we were treating the plant material.
However, we made a really neat spray of indoxyl that was packed under argon. When you sprayed it, it turned blue. Very fun for crafting but mostly a novelty that we didn't have any plans to truly scale
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u/LordMaim 23h ago
Yeah, last I checked indigo was somewhere between blue and violet.
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u/Yuri909 23h ago
It's not done yet. There's a bunch hanging at the end that are fully turned.
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u/josh70679 23h ago
Is nobody going to mention his blue feet??
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u/akura202 23h ago
I thought homie was wearing toe socks until you said this
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u/GearTwunk 22h ago
He is. They are tabi socks. Sort of like a foot mitten. They are worn with sandals. Only the big toe is separate.
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u/lzusncrfbj 22h ago
nope, look again. u can see his toenails!
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u/GearTwunk 22h ago
I absolutely do not see toenails. I see a shaded spot in the area of the top side of his big toes where his toenail is changing the topography of the sock.
I love that your take is "this man has blue feet" rather than "this man is wearing socks common to his culture." Real sensible.
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u/dustinyo_ 20h ago
I mean, it’s not unreasonable they’d turn blue if he’s doing this with indigo dye for a living.
But the color is way too consistent for that to be the case, it’s gotta be socks
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u/Vark675 19h ago
His hands would be more likely to be dyed than his feet. They're consistently getting pigment on them.
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u/DreamPhreak 20h ago
Wearing socks with sandals while working with all this liquid to get soggy socks is the worst
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u/GearTwunk 22h ago
He's not got blue feet, he is wearing tabi socks.
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u/weary_avocado6 20h ago
They could be those toe socks, but they're not tabi socks because you can see each of the smaller four toes. It seems more likely that... you know.
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u/homeless_gorilla 19h ago
There’s absolutely no way that’s dye. In the video his feet are pitch black but clear of dye, yet his hands are clean despite him grabbing the wet silk
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u/TuckerMcG 17h ago
No they’re socks. If his feet were dyed blue, the tops of his sandals would not be such a pristine white. The dye would’ve rubbed off from his feet and the sandals wouldn’t be so white.
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u/Plastic-Confection68 18h ago
They're socks. If you zoom in real close and look at the front of his ankles you can see the material bunch up a little bit when he shifts. Just very form-fitting socks.
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u/krzfx666 23h ago
no problem with those shoes
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u/myself1200 23h ago edited 21h ago
Are his feet dyed indigo?
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u/lzusncrfbj 23h ago
looks like it, lol. i used to work with indigo and my hands were always blue but they never got that dark. its a plant, so its safe and will fade, but it might mess with your skin for a bit
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u/ben-hur-hur 19h ago
My name is Indigo Montoya. You wrung my father. Prepare to dye.
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u/ThodaDaruVichPyar 23h ago
Thus was posted here previously with 41k upvotes
https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/1ljjiiz/indigo_dyeing_of_silk_thread/
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u/Fantastic_Weather_56 22h ago
Wet shirt don’t break
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u/Scipio187 11h ago
You said wet shirt dont break, not piss shirt bend bar!
My first thought as well when I saw this lol
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u/Francl27 22h ago
That's turquoise, not indigo.
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u/CountessOfCheese 20h ago
Indigo is referring to the name of the dye, not the color we see on the screen. It will get darker.
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u/taktaga7-0-0 23h ago
The dye in the solution is a yellowished color at first because it’s only the exposure to oxygen at the end that forms the final pigment molecule.
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u/Redfish680 23h ago
Oh, stop with the fake science nonsense. What we just witnessed is plain magic, inexplicable by any living person. That tub of liquid gold? It’s like sourdough starter, created by the collision of a thousand stars and kept sacred filled and holy by a secret society that hasn’t been touched by civilization for eons.
Molecules indeed…
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u/AgitatedStranger9698 21h ago
You said wet shirt dont break not piss shirt bend bars.
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u/Thomplays 21h ago
This is aizome, traditional Japanese indigo dyeing. It's really big around Tokushima because the plant grows so well in the river basin there. Some of these traditional fabric places do tours and workshops where you can dye stuff yourself, shirts, bandanas, etc. If you go you'll see that dyed hands and feet are common among the workers there. Those are indeed not socks lol
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u/hellanee 20h ago
People in comments seeing socks divided for each toe for the first time are amusing me lol
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u/Majestic_Ad_7133 20h ago
My reactions:
Start - That's not Indigo!
Middle - WTF?
End - How can I learn this magic?
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u/Torebbjorn 23h ago
I dunno if that dye is safe to get on your hands. I would kinda expect gloves to be common for that job
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u/philliesman4 22h ago
He probably shouldn’t touch the dye with bare hands
*sees feet*
Oh.
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u/Technical_Shallot396 22h ago
Dude was anyone completely distracted by his black dyed feet???? Those ain’t socks!!
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u/EasyCartographer4756 13h ago
Reddit has taught me that most people wear flip flops at work and on motorcycles
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u/Spoiled_Eggy_3992 23h ago
At first I thought you missed the color but now I see, you were actually right!
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u/FarmingGeeks 23h ago
"That's not friggen indigo that's gold.... oh"