Anyone ever dye raffia grass? I am looking for some pointers. I have 8 pounds on the way and I am wanting to do half dark green and the other half a darker brown color. Thanks.

Where'd you get just 8lbs from?

Ordered off amazon but it's from Jstern. the 8oz packages where "on sale" I paid around $55 for 8#'s of it. It's cheaper going through Jstern but I don't have a need for 25 pounds

I did some a few years ago worked good. U used 5 gallon buckets to dye it

I just used buckets for each color. Worked good, just lay them in the grass to dry. I tied my grass into small bundles using zip ties so they would work with layout blinds.

Rit dye works great use hot water and dye much darker than desired because it will fade over time. Also dying light then drying and re soaking works good. But once water has been used once I drain and re dye also leave it tied together all together one one end of strands i use twine.


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I just ordered 25lbs of natural raffia from J Sterns... I know that people use the Rit dye and make their own custom colors. I may be doing that... but first , I want to try spray painting to get a better fade. I know that others have not had success with spray painting, but I don't think they were using the right paint....

Check out:

http://www.dharmatrading.com/paints/jac ... olors.html

and

http://www.dharmatrading.com/paints/dye ... aints.html

I have a few of those $15 gravity feed guns from harbor freight that should be able to spray this stuff easily. Keep in mind that this paint is design to be "heat set", meaning that you need to use and iron or heat source to permanently dry it.... but they sell an additive that will allow you to "air set" it like normal paint.

I will post up some pictures... even if it is an epic fail. But I think that it has potential. I have seen some pretty ugly attempts at dying raffia and trying to camouflage a blind... they just look hideous. I have seen some good ones too.... just depends on how much time you are willing to put in.

Took me a few trips before I got the right color combo. I didn't dye mine, just bought several colors & mixed them together.

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Haven't done raffia but did do several Fastgrass mats some years ago. I had to make it pretty concentrated for the Fastgrass in order to get the penetration and darkness that I wanted. Soaked em in the sled I use on my decoy cart. Worked well. The raffia may take on the dye better than the palm leaves so I'd do some test strands first and let them dry to see how dark they get and whether you like the color. If I do it again, I'll always go the dye route rather than spray paint. The paint flakes and gets all over the place when the grass flexes. Also makes the fronds more brittle and they break more easily. After I got the color I wanted, I treated them with Thompson water seal. Keeps them from saturating in the rain and making the blind heavier. If you do that, you'll have to "dust" them as the Thompson's leaves a light oily sheen that I didn't like.

I used RIT dye on my rafia for my layouts. Brown and Green. Soak overnight in a bucket.
Has held color for about 3 seasons.

Starting to fade some, but I'll just add more grass. More Brown then anything for us down here.