The Dyer's Guide. Chapter IV. On Scouring and Dyeing Wool. To dye wool maroon

The Dyer's Guide
Being a Compendium of the Art of Dyeing
Linen, Cotton, Silk, Wool, Muslin, Dresses, Furniture, &c. &c.
With The Method of
Scouring Wool, Bleaching Cotton, &c.
And
Directions for Ungumming Silk, And For Whitening And Sulphuring Silk And Wool.
And Also
An Inttroductory Epitome of The Leading Facts in Chemistry, As Connected With The Art of Dyeing.

By Thomas Packer,
Dyer and Practical Chemist.

"Cet arte est un des plus utiles et des plus merveilleux qu'on connoisse."
- Chaptal.

"There is no art which depends so much on chemistry as dyeing."
- Garnett.

Second Edition,
Corrected and Materially Improved.

London:
Printed for Sherwood, Gilbert, And Piper,
Paternoster-Row.
1830.
The worsted or yarn must be boiled for an hour or two in one twelfth its weight of alum and the same quantity of white argol. It is best, when there is a large quantity of yarn, to do this on the preceding day: if your copper hold a pack of two hundred and forty pounds, it will be cold enough to handle after remaining with the fire out during the night.

When the skeins, &c. are taken out and arranged upon poles or sticks, have a fresh water ready in the copper, into which put about thirty pounds of chipped peachwood, and when it has boiled half an hour, pour in some water to cool it down, and add fifteen pounds of crop madder; work the yarn in this liquor rather under a boiling heat. When it is full enough, for some shades you must add archil. As the whole pack is dyed at four or five turnings in, some of the parcels may be varied in the hues instead of confining them all to one shade. The various turnings will take the greater part of the day to perform. When you choose to have as many shades as there are turnings in, you divide the drugs into different portions for different periods of the time, to be used according to the patterns required. The most economical method of using the drugs being to follow the patterns one after the other: practice will teach the operator to do this most advantageously.

More madder than peach-wood gives a lively red; more peach-wood than madder gives a bright maroon red, bordering on crimson, but more so without any madder; with the addition of archil it gives a crimson, but by no means to be compared with the crimson of cochineal. Urine with the archil renders a less quantity of archil
necessary.