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From Dominick:

After doing some careful color lab work on the color pylam blue, a fluorescent blue from keystone dyes and the color turq from dharma trading, I noticed not difference in the amount of popping from all three colors. The shade may be different slightly, but they all pop the same.

Save yourself the money and buy the turquoise from Dharma. It’s significantly cheaper by about $80 dollars. You are just buying the name. Make sure you use optical brightener though. There is no actual fluorescent blue so they say.

From Jamie:

The Flourescent Blue that I use from Pylam Flouresces

Jamie, Domenick:

You are actually both correct. Pylam *does* fluoresce, but it isn’t any

brighter than the optical whitener that most flag-makers use.

Dharma and Aljo do not.

So if you are treating your silk with optical whitener, it will look like

it doesn’t fluoresce any more than any other blue. (If you are in

doubt, it’s easy enough to test different blues on non-optically-treated

strips of silk).

I would agree with Domenick that it’s a better option if you are starting

out to stick with blues from Dharma or Aljo; you can buy smaller and

cheaper quantities and you are not likely to notice much difference.

(I might also point out that my experience has been that that

different blues mix with other dyes in subtly different ways, both

in the shade that results and also the amount of capillary action that

you get in the mixed shade.)

Many people want to start experimenting with different

shades after awhile. If one wants to try the Pylam blue, I believe

they will still send you a pretty sizeble sample for free if you ask.

You don’t need much blue, it goes a LONG way, so my free sample

lasted a long time.

Sometimes one can also bum a bit of the Pylam blue from a friend,

since the minimum purchase is so huge.

- Dan

Hello Dominick,

I must respectfully disagree. My experience with Pylam blue is that it does indeed fluoresce.

Dharma is a convenient choice to get many dye colors in one place and their prices are reasonable.

Pylam and several other companies offer additional colors that are beautiful and glow under UV.

Phillip I think you misunderstood. The pylam blue and the keystone blue do fluoresce, but they are exactly the same color as the turquoise from dharma with the exact amount of popping. The dharma is just cheaper that’s all. Just an observation. I have dips at home and I will take pics of them in daylight and under UV.

The dips that I have done used optical brightener as the base. All three Dharma, Keystone and Pylam were the same shade and all popped the same. I just wanted to save people money.

In my recent experiences, Pylam is a very different dye than other dyes. It can often overwhelm and saturate much faster than other dyes, and with that being said, offers an interesting quality as a blue against brilliant blue and others. I have found depending on how thick I mix it I can get very different shading and fluorescing as well. Additionally, mixing it to create a purple has given me a deeper more rich color for purple than mixing other blues. Looking at the composition of the dye in mix, there is certainly something different about it ? there is a darker hue to the dry dye mix to start with, which must result in some color differences. I do not mix the optic whitener into it rather I pre-wash all my silk with it. Maybe that creates a difference.

Careful about mixing your optic whitener nto the dye directly. It can cause the dye to clump and clog your bottles. The optic whitener is like "bleach plus" and is supposed to be used as a pre-treat.

Just my 2 cents worth…..

From D:

Yes, use the optic brightener first as a prewash. It helps the flourescent dyes pop better when applied. I made a couple of sets once without prewashing the silk and they were quite dark.

~D

Dominick,

I think its great that you wanted to share your experiences and at the same time save people money. We need more of that.

And, on top of that, you started a thread that encouraged the rest of us to share our experiences also! I tend to think that is a very good thing.

We all don’t always see everything eye-to-eye, and often when we see the same thing, we see it from a different angle.

But that’s what makes this a vibrant community. How boring it would be if we never shared our moves, our ideas, our flag-making experiences!

I think I speak for most flag-makers when I say that we are all priveleged when any of us shares what we have been through making flags. Any bit of experience gained by anyone, is achieved by time and thought and effort and sometimes money.

Thank you for taking the time to share your experiences. Not everyone is as open and generous as you. I hope you continue to choose to share with the rest of us.

- Dan

From Don:

Pylam does have a fluorescent brightener that is similar to a dye. I have not done much with it but I think it deserves some investigation. The powder is actually yellow. Im not sure if it could be mixed with non-fluorescent dyes to make them pop or not, but might be worth a try. They will probably send you a sample if you ask. I think we have really barely scratched the surface of what some of these dyes can do.

Don

Don…..is it a dye additive? I am intrigued that it is a powder and not a liquid. Maybe it would not make the dyes clump? Your right it is worth some investigation at least.

Elliot

You are absolutely right. do not mix it with the dye. My company always does what is called "bleaching with optic" before the dyeing process if the fabric requires it. You definately need to do it with the silks to get a good pop, especially with brilliant blue which does not fluoresce on it’s own.

From Don:

Elliot,

Give me a call and I will send some to you. You could try adding it to non f dye powder to see if it makes it pop, or mixing the two together once they are liquefied, etc etc. I’m not doing much dye work these days so don’t really have the time to play around with it.

Don

I just looked at the chemical formulas from the data sheets of the Violet and Blue dyes from Pylam and they both have an optical brightner mixed in with the dyes. That probably accounts for why they glow on untreated silk.

I have not yet tried the Turquoise from Dharma to see if it glows on untreated silk.