I have this question nearly every day of my life- everything the children touch: permanently stained, everything I try to dye: nope, not taking the color.
When your hair is 3 ft long, risking a few inches in the end for friendship is nothing. Also it's so much easier to cut the ends off it the die job turns out terrible, speaking from experience.
The dye in gall nuts is tannin... and to transfer to something else, it has to be suspended in water, rather than oil. In oil, it will just wash out the first time it is dissolved in something that dissolves oil, like soap or shampoo. If you'd boiled the gall nuts in water, you would have had plenty of indelible brown stains on any bit of skin the water or wet gall nuts touched. When used to dye sheep's wool, no mordant necessary for a fast dye, although dyeing in an iron pot will darken the dye (as will dyeing dark sheep's wool). I have a lot of hands-on experience in dyeing both protein and cellulose fibres. I'd say I'm an experienced amateur dyer. I'm much less qualified as an amateur historian! My guess is that the citrus peel was to give the end product a pleasant scent and the salt was used to help grind/pulverise the essential oil since the maker would have been using a mortar and pestle. Using a food processor or spice grinder, you could have skipped the salt. This is important, considering how I believe the product was intended to be used (see below). Also, consider that historically, the practice of washing all the sebum (natural skin oils) out of one's hair is pretty recent--post WWI or a bit later, depending on area and socioeconomic status. People were used to seeing other people with what we would consider oily hair today--that's why products like Brylcreem were so popular midcentury. You washed your hair in your newfangled daily shower and then restored that glossy, oily shine with a product that was essentially a mixture of some type of oil and wax. So I suspect that this hair dye would have been applied to hair that was already what we would consider oily, allowed to dry and possibly would have had more oil in the form of an oil or pomade applied to it for more gloss, smoothness and control (we have hairspray, mousse, gel, etc, they had oil and wax in various forms, they had oils and pomades). A dye that smelled nice would be essential for such an application. It probably gave a more successful result to the eyes of a young lady in the 1830s than it does to young ladies in the 21st century. Come to think of it, my strictly amateur impression is that most historical hair dyeing was intended to intensify one's natural colour rather than completely change it. So someone with Morgan's hair colour might have been more interested in experimenting with combing lemon juice through her hair then sitting out in the sun to bleach it to make it fairer or at least get enough highlights to give an impression of fairer hair--which was also admired.
Considering the stains I had on my hands from cutting up wallnuts for a wool dye (yes I know gloves are a thing, it was just a few for a sample and I'm a stubborn idiot), I think wallnuts might work on hair too?
@@snazzypazzy walnuts are still used to make dye in the country side. My grandma used walnut leaves for a dark tea/infusion that she'd put her head in for half an hour or so and the hair got a nice light brown from the original white/light gray. I should ask her for more details about this.
Yes, you need a water extraction and iron makes it turn black. I don't know about the oils, though, every time I want to dye some yarn, I try to clean out the wool as much as possible, to remove all oils, in order to increase color absorption (as the hair/fiber can absorb more water/dye solution if it is not saturated in oil). Heat is also essential, which is why maybe Morgan's hair should have been kept in a warm bath of the "tea" made from the galls.
Family story from around 1915. My family goes gray young. My great grandfather was looking for a way to conceal the gray streaks that stood out plainly in his black hair. One night before a date he put black shoe polish in his hair. All went well until it rained. He ruined a white shirt I think. The lady married him anyway and they had ten children together. Why do I feel like the 1833 lady who wore this was risking her clothing if it rained?
What this immediately brought to mind was the chapter in "Anne of Green Gables" in which she tries to dye her hair black with dye from a traveling peddler
Even if the dye had worked for Anne, what was she planning to do when it was time to color her roots? I also remember that scene quite clearly. It was one of my favorite books as a kid. So scared Morgan’s hair was going to do something super weird.
@@fridarefvik2538 I don't think she bleached it or did anything. She didn't even try soap until Marilla suggested it. Her hair probably went green because red hair was really tricky to dye. And the dye was probably only designed to cover up grays on someone with naturally dark hair. Dramatic and obviously dyed hair would have been socially unacceptable.
tannin (the chemical in oak galls that causes the brown/black color) is also a natural mordant. that's why no mordant was called for. a stronger mordant would probably darken the color though. from my limited experience in natural dying with oak galls, there are 2 elements you were missing are heat (the fiber is usually simmered in the dye stock... not something i suggest you do to Morgan's head :P ) and a ph shifter like vinegar.
I wondered. This makes sense. Given folks willingness to use hair tools that were heated over a stove, I wonder if heat was applied that way to hair at some part of the process?
I don't suppose that Alum would work safely on hair? if a bit more "oomph" is needed? But if the oak galls have a mordant agent in there, then it's as dark as it goes?
Having taken an entomology class and being really into bugs, when you said gall nuts I immediately thought "I wonder if she knows there's bugs in there. Well, she's gonna find out"
I guess as a gardener, I knew that there are no galls UNLESS there are bugs. Could be worse, as galls are used in Chinese medicine and are usually ingested as treatment.
Exactly! I thought the same thing. As a horticulturalist, I know that the galls are created by insects, so I was intrigued to see what she's think once she smashed then! 😆
@@emeraldannabelle3320 would you be able to afford anything if she sold it? Sewing takes a lot of time and fabric, so I can imagine anything she sold that is a genuine wearable article of clothing would be upwards of 200+ dollars
Reading that ferrous sulfate is used in the making of gall ink, I wonder if the dye was boiled in cast iron pots at the time? Significant iron is leached out especially if the contents are acidic, as the tannic galls are.
i do this kind of nonsense just for my own education and amusement. i feel like i should just set up a camera and see what weird content i get that i could edit into something fun. i also feel like Morgan, Abby, and I could absolutely be friends
I wonder what pot was used in the 1830's? An iron pot will yield an iron mordant. A tin lined copper pot, or an old copper pot. Having used natural dyes, the metal pot used can affect the dye pot by providing a mordant sometimes not intended.
I was thinking this same thing! Wasn't ink made from oak galls and iron? Like a rusty nail in the ink pot? Also, would it make a difference if your tap water is chlorinated and/or fluorinated?
Fascinating and gross, all at the same time. I think I’ll stick with modern dyes. Massive props to Morgan for volunteering her epic tresses, and same to you for continuing even though you were obviously NOT enjoying the process (don’t blame you at all). Ugh! Y’all go to great lengths (no pun intended) for our entertainment!!
I have a feeling our entertainment is a welcome side effect to those shenanigans, but that they would still do them if the internet suddenly wasn't there anymore - simply because they want to find out how things work.
I found gall nuts out in the wild once. Wow! Gall nuts, thought I, I shall bring them home to make ink! Within two days I threw them all away because there were SO MANY flies. It was revolting. I never did end up making ink.
well common red dye is LITERALLY squashed bugs. And even used as glace for fruits making many of the shiny apples technically non vegan anymore. Just food for thought
@@redlupo6193 I was also thinking of less processed wool in general for budget, not just roving. I guess the pre-combed/carded wool (ie roving) would be nicer for yt videos and probably easier to find without going to the source. Just need to watch out for the "roving" that is sold in big box craft stores that has a rope or yarn core.
@@GadereneLegion human hair and wool are effectively the same thing--protein based fibers from animal furs--so for the purposes of testing potentially damaging if not dangerous dyes it's a decent initial test subject. If you're concerned for animal welfare, an old wool sweater that's no longer fit to be worn that's unbleached ideally or at least a pale color would work too. Just remember that any processing/laundering chemicals may affect the results of the dyes your testing.
People in the Middle East and India have long used henna for red hair, and then adding indigo to darken it. This is completely safe, so I think you need to look for ancient hair practices used in this region.
"He said it would turn my hair a beautiful raven black--he positively assured me that it would. How could I doubt his word, Marilla?" At least it didn't turn it a putrid green. Thanks for the fun video :)
Willow bark charcoal can be used for artwork! If it’s a stick that’s perfect for sketching or if it’s powder you can use it with a brush. Even add some mixing mediums.
my favorite historically available black hair dye: dye with henna, then overdye with indigo. It comes out beautiful and permanent (like I bleached my hair to dye it green months later and all of my hair was blonde except the outgrown roots which were still jet black. Hmm, now I need to order more henna and indigo...
Dying with henna is such a messy and long process though. And if the intention is red not black as per the indigo part it's not super effective on dark hair. :(
I've used gallnut to make historic ink before, and I recall acid needed to be added to make it a proper black and ensure it kept that color. (Same reason old letters are falling apart.)
Given that willow bark is full of salicin, which is a natural chemical. (The orginal aspirin) I am thinking if you used the willow bark charcoal it would have produced a chemical reaction making it work much better.
I was admiring Abby's restraint when there were no jokes about bruising the nuts, and then I realized she was saving the giggles for the insect sex tree balls. Touche' Abby Cox. Touche'
Historically, women didn’t wash their hair often at all, and usually just combed their hair (if they even did that). They would style their hair, do the teasing, the powdering, the dyeing, and then leave it for days on end so they didn’t have to redo it everyday. So I imagine that they used this recipe, massaged it in their hair and combed it, then left it like that.
galls, probably one of the strangest things ever. fried bugs- yay. Morgan sacrificing four years' growth for science had me on the edge of my seat, didn't even get coffee first.
Right?! I used to have hair past my butt as well, and I would NEVER have done something like this 😂 when you have that much hair it kinda becomes part of who you are. I was the girl with the really long blonde hair, all through childhood, high school, and I only chopped it in college because I got dumped and what else do you do when that happens?🤷🏼♀️
@@ragnkja you can get stuff like that in a pet store for birds. I have memories of being six and having to feed the neighbours birds while they were on holidays. The memory is mostly in my nose. At 72 I can still bring that smell to my nose.
As a Gen X Historical Sewing Nerd, thank you for the Meatloaf call-out. I feel seen. And validated for secretly liking the song when it came out in the 90's. This is a damn cool collaboration. Well done, all. - Cathy (&, accidently, Steve), Ottawa/Bytown
Purest proof Morgan is an Actual Hufflepuff! She is the huffliest puff we could have ever been blessed with, and we are so grateful to her for hufflepuffing through our existence.
my preferred way of breaking up oak galls is to put them in a large ziplock bag, wear sturdy shoes, and then just... step on them ! One of the reasons this didn't work might be the oil ? I've definitely heard of oak galls being soaked/boiled in water for making ink, fabric and hair dye, but never in oil, so I wonder if the tannin in them is even soluble in oil. Also, I didn't expect the charcoal to work at all : it is a pigment, not a colorant and therefore _dispersible_ but not _soluble_ . Maybe the author wasn't aware of this distinction and was trying to use the galls as mordant for the 'colorant' in the charcoal.
I *suppose* the receipt didn't want to extract the tannin from the galls, hence the oil instead of the water. But yeah, during the boiling a lot of dye was clearly lost anyway. I totally agree about the charcoal, I can't undertand its purpose... The receipt reminds me a mix-and-match from those of the two common black ink, the charcoal one and the ferrogallic ink. Whitout the ferro-part :| (I apologize for my English, I'm not native speaker so I hope this was comprehensible :D )
@@m.maclellan7147 actually receipt was commonly used in this time period. I think there's a technical modern difference in receipt vs recipe in if there are instructions or just a list if ingredients but I'm a bit fuzzy on it.
Perhaps they used the willow bark charcoal as some kind of mordant? if it contained some amount of ashes, it would become some sort of lye, if mixed with water and let sit for some time?
I had coloured my hair a random mix of violet and cherry red on a whim. the red faded into pink. the violet did not fade at all. So I tried to bleach it out, somehow forgetting what should have been an unforgettable incident in the early 90s where my boss at a salon I used to work at asked me to dye, then bleach her hair against my (and other stylists') advice. Her hair turned pink, then somehow green. (as it does, if you know your colour theory 🤦) As did the once violet streaks in my hair. *sighs* The green did fade into mint and eventually faded out entirely, but hubby and my kids laughed their butts off. Especially as hubby knows the boss and about the incident. My hair is currently dye free but I'm getting the itch again... 🤔
the other thing about the citrus peel is that they didn't give an amount to use, so I was just shooting in the dark with the amount that I used...gotta love historic recipes... 🤣
I wonder if they used it as a paste to colour the hair temporarily when put up in a style, like a gel/hairspray to set and colour the hair for a posh do! If it set hard that would make sense especially when you said about being used in China, when you think of their sleek black hair style of times past.
OMG. That was epic. Morgan is such a trooper, for risking her pretty locks for this experiment. I was super very impressed with that store-bought stuff, though. I color my hair with henna and Indigo every couple weeks and if you do that right, you can actually achieve a deep and lasting black color...but the whole procedure takes 4-5 hours and my scalp is discolored for at least a day afterwards. I would love a non-oxidative haircolor, that does the trick in less than half an hour.
wait wait wait! if i dye my hair with indigo will i get the navy blue of my dreams? ( I assume you use henna and indigo bc the browny red and blue make a black?)
@@saritshull3909 Well, the thing with Indigo is...it doesn't adhere very well to the hair. I tried using just Indigo on my roots (ashy medium brown with a lot of white hairs) and got a very distinct bluish hue, but the color was uneven and kinda translucent, which resulted in more of a grayish blue, rather then black blue. The trick to getting a natural looking and lasting black, is to dye with henna first (as hot as possible, min 30 min, but preferably longer). Henna sticks to hair really well and afterwards, you can then redye the copper pigments with the indigo (no hotter than 50*C, to avoid a greenish tint). I leave both on my hair for about 2 hours, covered tightly with saran wrap and a towel. Afterwards, you rinse out your hair (no shampoo or conditioner!), let it dry and leave it alone till the next day, since the color continues to develop and deepen once in contact with oxygen from the air. Then you can wash and condition as usual. Do not be concerned, if your hair feels dry and badly tangled during the wash out. That goes away, once it's dry, promise. Just leave the hair alone, no matter how messy it feels and looks. The next day, after washing it properly, your hair will be incredibly silky, shiny and voluminous. Now, my hair ends up deep black with only a hint of blue in certain light conditions that way. Probably because, as you said, it's a mixture of red and blue/black. If Indigo alone will work for you, depends on your natural hair color. It can certainly produce a very blueish hue, but it will not necessarily fully cover your natural hair color, then. Or you could try dying several layers of Indigo. I rather like, that it produces such a natural looking result, so I never tried.
@@saritshull3909 I never tried it myself, but from what I've gathered from reading about other people's experiments, bleached hair tends to 'loose' pigments through repeated washing fairly quickly. But that's mostly fashion haircolors...not sure, if it applies to henna and indigo. I can tell you, that for me the color is permanent. No trace of it in the wash water after the second wash or so and no fading or such, at all. But again, I can't vouch for the result, if you use just Indigo. You will likely have to dye it several times then, so the color can accumulate in layers. The good news is, if you buy it in ethnic grocery stores, it's not expensive at all. And it really doesn't hurt the hair. I do this every 3 weeks to cover my roots, with no ill effects at all. It's just a messy, time consuming procedure.
Haha. This is how we do this. I get it girl, I dyed my friend’s hair red with henna without gloves after telling people all day long remember gloves & to not just used your hands. But 10th Kingdom, baking & henna cannot ve stopped.
I dye the yarn I spin black with gull nut and oak twigs and as a mordent I use arm and hammer washing soda and get it as hot as I can without felting my yarn. I bet it did need ammonia because a lot of older technics use old pee.But I'm not an expert on hair I just do yarn and fabric.
I love your channel. I don't know how to sew, but I love history and the time periods you go cover. Thank you so much!! This video was really interesting. I've always wondered how or if they would pamper like we do in salons
LOL nope - never something I've ever studied or even thought about until I was seeing their tiny carcasses float to the top and Nicole was like "Um duh?" 🤣
using one brand of body art quality henna that you like can help you standardize things. henna is also very dependent on the colour you're dying over because it's transparent. think like a red cellophane. if you put it over white you're going to get a very bright colour. put it over black and you'll barely see a change. build up layers and you'll see it get darker. i've been doing henna for years and i just had to bleach some streaks to remove some of the layers and layers of henna that had slowly gotten a lot darker than i wanted. from now on i'll just be doing henna on the roots and giving the length more gloss and thickness with cassia
I wrapped mine in plastic and then heated with a blow dryer for 20 minutes. Then wrapped in paper towels and covered with a shower cap. I left all of that on for an hour or two. I added aloe vera juice and lemon juice to mine, too. The white hair turned out bright Celtic red and the dark brown turned out vibrant dark auburn. It was very permanent, too. (I just cut it all off to go gray. 😱)
@@anyascelticcreations yes that is what I liked when I first went grey too. You got all these lovely varieties of colour. You get that with colours like blue and purple and green to. The grey goes neon coloured and the brown was dark. But now it is nearly all white so it doesn't play anymore.
I've seen galls out in the wild around here. It's from an insect, I think a wasp, that plants it's babies into a stem or small branch. As their babies grow in said stem, it swells up! They hatch and fly away to do buggy things, but the gall is left behind. I'm only recalling this from memory as I've been told by naturalists.
Gall nuts were/are also used for fountain pen inks! the tannic acid from the galls reacts with oxigen to form a dark pigment, and changes colours while you write, pretty cool to watch! They are higher maintenance than standard inks but they are waterproof, which is probably why they were so popular in the past. As for the hairdye, it makes sense to let it dry on the hair as it needs to react with the oxigen in the air, and it can't do this while still wet. Gallotanic acid is also a weak acid (perhaps you could get a pH-meter to measure the acidity of your concoction?), which might explain the way her hair felt afterwards, as acid might damage the hair fibers. I also believe that the nature of the chemical reaction is the reason it doesn't hold very well, since it's just a pigment that forms after oxigenation, it doesn't actually bind with the hair, it's just laying on top of the hair fibers. When galls are used in inks they are paired with iron salts to strengthen the colour, though they are known to be pretty unstable colours that can fade etc. Perhaps this was the equivalent of a temporary hair dye of the past with easily accesible ingredients? I could imagine someone wanting to cover up white hairs or something and just using galls which can be found on most trees. All in all, a very interesting experiment, definitely giving me a lot of food for thought! x
Just wondering if, since people didn’t wash their hair often, it was intended to be a temp color? And the natural oils may have helped with the shiny factor?
The majestic shenanigans that y'all do bring me joy. Thank you Morgan for putting your hair on the line for this and thank you Abby for going down this rabbit hole.
In my experience of dyeing protein fibers naturally, there's an acid missing that would make this more permanent. I wouldn't suggest it, but dousing hair to be dyed in lemon juice or vinegar might help. The other solution I know is soda ash, but that's more for bast fibers than proteins.
I wonder if the "salt" in the recipe was supposed to be iron salts like used in ink. Here is the chemistry from Wikipediaen.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_gall_ink
That makes so much more sense. The only other purpose for the salt I could think of was that it was their way of making it gel like substance that made it easier to apply. It seems like they took a recipe for ink to adapt for hair, not realizing they were creating a colorant that would just sit on the hair shaft rather than being absorbed.
It could have been to ionize the gall pigment if water was the solute instead of oil. It is possible that there was a large amount of iron in the salt the author was using and they didn't know it.
If one boils something containing a lot of salt in a bare iron pot (i.e. not enameled as Abby's was) there will be iron in the result, perhaps a significant amount of iron after and hour and 36 minutes
There's a French cooking technique called confit which basically means to cook in fat. That's more or less what you did to the insect sex tree balls. It's making me giggle quite a lot that you confit-ed to get hair dye. There's a pun in there somwhere.
Yes, that’s what I was thinking too - confit I mean. And then a second later I laughed when the brand of cooker used was Comfee. I had to go online to investigate.
I'm glad you looked up what gallnuts were before posting. Also, I think what they mean by bruising is the recipe was asking for fresh gallnuts. Like others have said, it's a traditional component for making some inks. Just on the fact that the gallnuts weren't fresh I didn't expect it to work
💄I remember trying to hide my white “skunk stripe” along my center part of black hair while portraying the 1860’s. My thought process was “Oh no! Visitors will see it’s a dead giveaway that I color my hair, aka “modern”. I actually used to swipe my finger inside the globes of the oil lamps for the black soot which I used to “fill in” my part. No period reference, just my own necessity borning invention. Imagine my surprise when I learned that “The Original Cast” colored their hair too, and it usually came out black!🤦🏻♀️ I think I will stick with Revlon Colorsilk for now, but thank you for the effort 😂!💋
LOL I remember teasing my Mom for her skunk streak...so you can imagine my horror and shock when I started developing one (along with wings above the ears...) in my late 20s....I started to dye my hair...but then a friend let my Mom in on the secret and I got teased about being a hybrid Bride of Frankenstein and Grampa Munster! LOL
@@kennashey I had already been coloring my hair since High School so I didn’t see my natural color much, but I caught my first glint of gray in the rear view mirror of my car at 21. Who knows how long it had been there?
I haven't even watched it yet, but I already liked it because I'm this happy to see you! I have pretty hard Sunday and even harder week ahead of me, so I just can't wait for this 20min of fun
This kind of video is my JAM I don't even care that it didn't work, this is my favorite kind of history stuff--it's basically experimental archeology and that is my favorite thing in the whole world
Amazed tsa didn’t inspect your jar of weird, once I packed like 6 jams triple bagged and they inspected ALL of them. So triple bag weird jars at your own risk haha
I love how Abby was rocking those confy 90's sandals! I hadn't seen a pair of them in the longest time ever. Btw Morgan is the MVP for volunteering her hair 💗
Yay Morgan! You were a temporary squid. When you said natural hair dye, I actually expected you to say walnuts. I know that's been used as a natural brown dye, but I don't know a ton of the details. I've never heard of gall nuts, but thank you for introducing me to insect sex tree balls 😂
Yeah, I’m not surprised that there was no change to the hair because there was nothing in the dye to change the texture or remove the natural color. The charcoal was only there to cover the hair shaft. Because there was no catalyst to change the hair shaft structure, like a bleach, it was going to be easy to remove.
Well, there are plants that will color hair without an oxidant/bleach. I dye my hair black (from medium brown!) with henna and indigo. It redults in a deep, black, lasting color, if you do it right. You can't even tell, it's dyed. No idea, why those plant extracts adhere so well to the hairshaft and these here didn't. I was honestly surprised, there was no discoloration at all.
The most efficient way to do this is to layer Henna, then indigo, if possible several times, for a dark and permanent black. An extra layer of henna can help seal the pigment so it doesn't wash out. Gallnut is sometimes added to henna to make it browner, unless I'm mistaken (brou de noix ou noix de lavage in French). I've never tried tho. Varying degrees of indigo or mixing it with henna gives brown. Iron oxide stain is also a good black stain for wood and fabric, I don't know if it can be used for hair but I have no doubt it would likely be changed or stained partially
I wonder if, on hair that wasn’t clean and had maybe been oiled and then was going to be put up in one of those elaborate coiffures, if the historical formula would work in a way? It certainly seems like it would dampen down red hair if that was undesirable at the time.
I love it when I catch glimpses of your Blue Willow China. Would love a dress or something inspired by that, or maybe just a history of it with the cute little love story they made up for it!
Loved this video! Watching Abby deal with gall nuts and trying to "bruise" them...! As someone else commented, if the gall nuts were fresh, actual bruising, as opposed to breaking, may have been possible. Maybe when the willow bark charcoal arrives, Abby could try this again with fresh galls? Definitely an interesting experiment!
Yes I think so too! Boiling them in oil to soften them makes much more sense if it's fresh ones, with the dried ones it probably would have been better to boil them in water and leave them to soak a while instead.
With the historic dye it makes me wonder how long it would last because I know the Victorians didn’t wash their hair as often as we do now, so with brushing it out it makes me wonder if it actually meant to be black dye or darkening. But it didn’t look good as they said so who knows lolol
I’m glad to hear you mention henna. You can use a henna base with indigo and achieve black. For white, Gray, or blonde hair, prime with an application of pure red henna following the product’s directions. Rinse, towel dry, and apply the indigo. Always do a strand test! I used to work with talking people through the process of using Light Mountain Henna Hair Color and it works!
They really took the time to make this hair dye back then.. the whole process 😲 That's crazy!! And look at where we are at now. What an advancement! Seeing this was so cool! We've came a long way 🙂
So, I know it felt super lame, but look at it another way: it's olde fashioned hair spray. Like... Fully wash out colour. The kind of hair makeup we find very modern was totally an option if you felt like having dark hair for literally a day.
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I am always happy to sacrifice myself in the name of ✨Historical Science✨
(especially if I can be lazy and just sit there :p )
Thank you for being you & such a good sport! 😍❤️🥳 (psimissyou)
IN THE NAME OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE !
That is friendship right there.
This is not historical science.
Thank you for sticking out your uh... Hair, for this experiment! I'm sure Abby agrees when I say "you da MVP!"
Trying to dye anything: Why won't you change color?
Trying to get stains out of things: Why are you so freaking permanent?
I laughed so loud at that! The dog was quite concerned...
Oh, yes! You nailed that one!
Very that.
I have this question nearly every day of my life- everything the children touch: permanently stained, everything I try to dye: nope, not taking the color.
@@sorelyanlie2784 time to start dying fabric and hair with child candy/markers/whatever?
I love how Morgan was like “f*ck me up” and totally game to put her hair on the line. Great video y’all!
oh she was *into* it - she's the best - 10/10
When your hair is 3 ft long, risking a few inches in the end for friendship is nothing. Also it's so much easier to cut the ends off it the die job turns out terrible, speaking from experience.
Agree!
Literally how I go about my hair interactions
I laughed at that soooo hard😂🤣
The dye in gall nuts is tannin... and to transfer to something else, it has to be suspended in water, rather than oil. In oil, it will just wash out the first time it is dissolved in something that dissolves oil, like soap or shampoo. If you'd boiled the gall nuts in water, you would have had plenty of indelible brown stains on any bit of skin the water or wet gall nuts touched. When used to dye sheep's wool, no mordant necessary for a fast dye, although dyeing in an iron pot will darken the dye (as will dyeing dark sheep's wool).
I have a lot of hands-on experience in dyeing both protein and cellulose fibres. I'd say I'm an experienced amateur dyer. I'm much less qualified as an amateur historian!
My guess is that the citrus peel was to give the end product a pleasant scent and the salt was used to help grind/pulverise the essential oil since the maker would have been using a mortar and pestle. Using a food processor or spice grinder, you could have skipped the salt. This is important, considering how I believe the product was intended to be used (see below).
Also, consider that historically, the practice of washing all the sebum (natural skin oils) out of one's hair is pretty recent--post WWI or a bit later, depending on area and socioeconomic status. People were used to seeing other people with what we would consider oily hair today--that's why products like Brylcreem were so popular midcentury. You washed your hair in your newfangled daily shower and then restored that glossy, oily shine with a product that was essentially a mixture of some type of oil and wax.
So I suspect that this hair dye would have been applied to hair that was already what we would consider oily, allowed to dry and possibly would have had more oil in the form of an oil or pomade applied to it for more gloss, smoothness and control (we have hairspray, mousse, gel, etc, they had oil and wax in various forms, they had oils and pomades). A dye that smelled nice would be essential for such an application.
It probably gave a more successful result to the eyes of a young lady in the 1830s than it does to young ladies in the 21st century.
Come to think of it, my strictly amateur impression is that most historical hair dyeing was intended to intensify one's natural colour rather than completely change it. So someone with Morgan's hair colour might have been more interested in experimenting with combing lemon juice through her hair then sitting out in the sun to bleach it to make it fairer or at least get enough highlights to give an impression of fairer hair--which was also admired.
She did boil it in water. The first day she boiled them in oil. Then she dried them. The second day she boiled them in water.
I really hope Abby reads what you read, I certainly had fun reading it
Considering the stains I had on my hands from cutting up wallnuts for a wool dye (yes I know gloves are a thing, it was just a few for a sample and I'm a stubborn idiot), I think wallnuts might work on hair too?
@@snazzypazzy walnuts are still used to make dye in the country side. My grandma used walnut leaves for a dark tea/infusion that she'd put her head in for half an hour or so and the hair got a nice light brown from the original white/light gray. I should ask her for more details about this.
Yes, you need a water extraction and iron makes it turn black. I don't know about the oils, though, every time I want to dye some yarn, I try to clean out the wool as much as possible, to remove all oils, in order to increase color absorption (as the hair/fiber can absorb more water/dye solution if it is not saturated in oil). Heat is also essential, which is why maybe Morgan's hair should have been kept in a warm bath of the "tea" made from the galls.
Family story from around 1915. My family goes gray young. My great grandfather was looking for a way to conceal the gray streaks that stood out plainly in his black hair. One night before a date he put black shoe polish in his hair. All went well until it rained. He ruined a white shirt I think. The lady married him anyway and they had ten children together.
Why do I feel like the 1833 lady who wore this was risking her clothing if it rained?
That is such a sweet story!
Awww such a sweet story. I love happy endings.:)
What a great story! Thank you for sharing it!
yes.... they probably would have left the product sit inside the hair. But... I think she had an original recipe with original instructions?
How do you have a story from all that time ago? That’s mad
What this immediately brought to mind was the chapter in "Anne of Green Gables" in which she tries to dye her hair black with dye from a traveling peddler
Me too! I wondered if Morgan would end up with green hair
Even if the dye had worked for Anne, what was she planning to do when it was time to color her roots?
I also remember that scene quite clearly. It was one of my favorite books as a kid.
So scared Morgan’s hair was going to do something super weird.
@@marthahawkinson-michau9611 bold of you to assume Anne Shirley was capable of planning :p
@@lindsayjones4795 didn't her hair turn green because she tried to bleach it after?
@@fridarefvik2538 I don't think she bleached it or did anything. She didn't even try soap until Marilla suggested it. Her hair probably went green because red hair was really tricky to dye. And the dye was probably only designed to cover up grays on someone with naturally dark hair. Dramatic and obviously dyed hair would have been socially unacceptable.
tannin (the chemical in oak galls that causes the brown/black color) is also a natural mordant. that's why no mordant was called for. a stronger mordant would probably darken the color though. from my limited experience in natural dying with oak galls, there are 2 elements you were missing are heat (the fiber is usually simmered in the dye stock... not something i suggest you do to Morgan's head :P ) and a ph shifter like vinegar.
I wondered. This makes sense. Given folks willingness to use hair tools that were heated over a stove, I wonder if heat was applied that way to hair at some part of the process?
Mightn't it've been the purpose of the citrus peel in there? Or is the peel itself not acidic enough to affect the pH in the whole mixture?
@@Cationna the citrus opens the cuticle of the hair shaft.
I don't suppose that Alum would work safely on hair? if a bit more "oomph" is needed? But if the oak galls have a mordant agent in there, then it's as dark as it goes?
I was also going to suggest a vinegar or citric acid.
Having taken an entomology class and being really into bugs, when you said gall nuts I immediately thought "I wonder if she knows there's bugs in there. Well, she's gonna find out"
I guess as a gardener, I knew that there are no galls UNLESS there are bugs.
Could be worse, as galls are used in Chinese medicine and are usually ingested as treatment.
😆😅
@@itzel1735 I was looking for this comment! I had thought the same thing. :)
Same! 🤣🤣🤣
Exactly! I thought the same thing. As a horticulturalist, I know that the galls are created by insects, so I was intrigued to see what she's think once she smashed then! 😆
I love you both :')
Don’t we all
RACHEEEEEL 💖💖💖💖
Hi! I love your work please start some sort of Etsy shop 🌈
Yay Rachel!!!!!🥰🥰🥰
@@emeraldannabelle3320 would you be able to afford anything if she sold it? Sewing takes a lot of time and fabric, so I can imagine anything she sold that is a genuine wearable article of clothing would be upwards of 200+ dollars
Reading that ferrous sulfate is used in the making of gall ink, I wonder if the dye was boiled in cast iron pots at the time? Significant iron is leached out especially if the contents are acidic, as the tannic galls are.
My guess is that the recipe is right, but the vessel was not.
That the wooden spoon didn’t change color was a clue that it wasn’t go work on hair.
@@itzel1735 well now i want to put blueberries on my hair!
I definitely turned a wooden spoon a really gorgeous warm purple making jam.
@@saritshull3909 try it and make a video please!!
true people only used cast iron back then.
@@saritshull3909 it would likely not work, wood pulp is cellulose unfortunately 🥺
I love the shenanigans that the costubers get themselves into for the sake of historical experimentation (and entertaining content haha)
i do this kind of nonsense just for my own education and amusement. i feel like i should just set up a camera and see what weird content i get that i could edit into something fun. i also feel like Morgan, Abby, and I could absolutely be friends
T-shirt idea:
“ I tried 1830’s hair dye and all I got was a scrying bowl. “
Omg yesss I love this idea! xx
I would totally wear that 😂
I thought scrying bowl when I saw that dye in the water too!
Hahaha, I love this. I want this t-shirt in the Catherine DeMedici Timetravel Society merch.
I wonder what pot was used in the 1830's? An iron pot will yield an iron mordant. A tin lined copper pot, or an old copper pot. Having used natural dyes, the metal pot used can affect the dye pot by providing a mordant sometimes not intended.
I was thinking this same thing! Wasn't ink made from oak galls and iron? Like a rusty nail in the ink pot? Also, would it make a difference if your tap water is chlorinated and/or fluorinated?
That’s what i was thinking. “Iron gall ink” so maybe cast iron would be standard and not stated in the recipe?
Fascinating and gross, all at the same time. I think I’ll stick with modern dyes. Massive props to Morgan for volunteering her epic tresses, and same to you for continuing even though you were obviously NOT enjoying the process (don’t blame you at all). Ugh! Y’all go to great lengths (no pun intended) for our entertainment!!
There are natural hair dyes from nature like henna and indigo that do the same things they were trying to do. They could have saved money as well.
I have a feeling our entertainment is a welcome side effect to those shenanigans, but that they would still do them if the internet suddenly wasn't there anymore - simply because they want to find out how things work.
Well Gall nuts are used for ink so it makes sense. And yes the little holes in gallnuts was from the little bugs :) LOL
wasps, to be specific. Oak gall wasps.
okay, just got to that point in the video. Damn ADHD, watch the thing, then comment.
barf, that's so gross
Huh. I knew what oak galls were, but I initially assumed that gall nuts were some weird obscure American nut I'd never heard of. Interesting!
"No feedback please. We know it's chaos. " I want to embroider that and put on my wall.
Sounds like a merch opportunity, tbh 😆
"He promised me it would dye my hair a beautiful raven black!"
anne with an E?!
Anne from Green gables ^^
Green hair, foiling all our Princess Cordelia dreams! 😠 XD
I found gall nuts out in the wild once. Wow! Gall nuts, thought I, I shall bring them home to make ink! Within two days I threw them all away because there were SO MANY flies. It was revolting. I never did end up making ink.
well common red dye is LITERALLY squashed bugs. And even used as glace for fruits making many of the shiny apples technically non vegan anymore. Just food for thought
Yes, very frustrating! "Natural dye" can be "naturally squashed beetles" If the label says Cochineal or Carmine, its bugs 😝
Ya gotta love "Gettin' Down t' Business" Abby ... hair up, big glasses on. We need a t-shirt with that image, captioned "Now Let's Do This!"
😹
For future shenanigans when a convenient, kind Morgan does not abound, not-spun wool would probably be a decent test subject.
Or maybe a human hair wig
It's called ROVING if anyone wants to buy it online. Used for spinning and dyeing.
@@redlupo6193 I was also thinking of less processed wool in general for budget, not just roving. I guess the pre-combed/carded wool (ie roving) would be nicer for yt videos and probably easier to find without going to the source. Just need to watch out for the "roving" that is sold in big box craft stores that has a rope or yarn core.
@Rebecca I would think you’d want to test it on virgin hair, and a light colored virgin wig, if it even exists, is probably ridiculously expensive.
@@GadereneLegion human hair and wool are effectively the same thing--protein based fibers from animal furs--so for the purposes of testing potentially damaging if not dangerous dyes it's a decent initial test subject.
If you're concerned for animal welfare, an old wool sweater that's no longer fit to be worn that's unbleached ideally or at least a pale color would work too. Just remember that any processing/laundering chemicals may affect the results of the dyes your testing.
People in the Middle East and India have long used henna for red hair, and then adding indigo to darken it. This is completely safe, so I think you need to look for ancient hair practices used in this region.
and they exported henna to peoples all over Europe in the Bronze age and probably earlier
@@cadileigh9948 This is true.
Agreed
"He said it would turn my hair a beautiful raven black--he positively assured me that it would. How could I doubt his word, Marilla?" At least it didn't turn it a putrid green. Thanks for the fun video :)
I tried once henna to dye my hair black which didn't work and when I bleached my hair a few months after I had parts of my hair in algae green
Living for that reference!!!
Thats what i was thinking about the whole video
+10,000 points for “black Ferngully goo”
My first thought was a green haired Anne sobbing, "It was supposed to turn my hair a beautiful raven black!"
Willow bark charcoal can be used for artwork! If it’s a stick that’s perfect for sketching or if it’s powder you can use it with a brush. Even add some mixing mediums.
my favorite historically available black hair dye: dye with henna, then overdye with indigo. It comes out beautiful and permanent (like I bleached my hair to dye it green months later and all of my hair was blonde except the outgrown roots which were still jet black. Hmm, now I need to order more henna and indigo...
Dying with henna is such a messy and long process though. And if the intention is red not black as per the indigo part it's not super effective on dark hair. :(
@@catherines2544 it's definitely a messy process, a lot like playing in mud! The effect is definitely less dramatic on darker hair.
Didn't I read somewhere that indigo isn't super great for your hair (in the spirit of "refrain if you intend to grow it really long")?
@@aliceg5327 I've never heard that but would love to read about it if you have sources.
I've used gallnut to make historic ink before, and I recall acid needed to be added to make it a proper black and ensure it kept that color. (Same reason old letters are falling apart.)
Given that willow bark is full of salicin, which is a natural chemical. (The orginal aspirin) I am thinking if you used the willow bark charcoal it would have produced a chemical reaction making it work much better.
inquiring minds must know
Morgan is such a lovely sport!
I was admiring Abby's restraint when there were no jokes about bruising the nuts, and then I realized she was saving the giggles for the insect sex tree balls.
Touche' Abby Cox. Touche'
I was just way too into crushing the balls to think about making jokes. It was so satisfying. 🤣
Historically, women didn’t wash their hair often at all, and usually just combed their hair (if they even did that). They would style their hair, do the teasing, the powdering, the dyeing, and then leave it for days on end so they didn’t have to redo it everyday. So I imagine that they used this recipe, massaged it in their hair and combed it, then left it like that.
galls, probably one of the strangest things ever. fried bugs- yay. Morgan sacrificing four years' growth for science had me on the edge of my seat, didn't even get coffee first.
Right?! I used to have hair past my butt as well, and I would NEVER have done something like this 😂 when you have that much hair it kinda becomes part of who you are. I was the girl with the really long blonde hair, all through childhood, high school, and I only chopped it in college because I got dumped and what else do you do when that happens?🤷🏼♀️
I once saw a historic blonde dye recipe that contained pidgeon poop! I am so glad of my favourite hairdresser.
I found a hair removal recipe that involved ant eggs and 🤢
@@AbbyCox
Yeah, not willing to dig through an anthill to find those.
@@ragnkja you can get stuff like that in a pet store for birds. I have memories of being six and having to feed the neighbours birds while they were on holidays. The memory is mostly in my nose. At 72 I can still bring that smell to my nose.
@@AbbyCox @Abby Cox great job on her hair
As a Gen X Historical Sewing Nerd, thank you for the Meatloaf call-out. I feel seen. And validated for secretly liking the song when it came out in the 90's.
This is a damn cool collaboration. Well done, all.
- Cathy (&, accidently, Steve), Ottawa/Bytown
Boy I was confused why "lime" was on your list of scary things, picturing the fruit... Took me way too long to realize you meant quicklime lol
Purest proof Morgan is an Actual Hufflepuff! She is the huffliest puff we could have ever been blessed with, and we are so grateful to her for hufflepuffing through our existence.
Maximum Puff energy
😂😂😂😂
I have heard of using Gall nuts for ink so it makes total sense to me to use them as hair dye.
my preferred way of breaking up oak galls is to put them in a large ziplock bag, wear sturdy shoes, and then just... step on them !
One of the reasons this didn't work might be the oil ? I've definitely heard of oak galls being soaked/boiled in water for making ink, fabric and hair dye, but never in oil, so I wonder if the tannin in them is even soluble in oil. Also, I didn't expect the charcoal to work at all : it is a pigment, not a colorant and therefore _dispersible_ but not _soluble_ . Maybe the author wasn't aware of this distinction and was trying to use the galls as mordant for the 'colorant' in the charcoal.
I *suppose* the receipt didn't want to extract the tannin from the galls, hence the oil instead of the water. But yeah, during the boiling a lot of dye was clearly lost anyway. I totally agree about the charcoal, I can't undertand its purpose... The receipt reminds me a mix-and-match from those of the two common black ink, the charcoal one and the ferrogallic ink. Whitout the ferro-part :|
(I apologize for my English, I'm not native speaker so I hope this was comprehensible :D )
@@merrianith2589 only thing that wasn't clear was you meant "recipe", not 'receipt' !
@@m.maclellan7147 'receipt' would have been an accurate usage in the time period!
@@m.maclellan7147 actually receipt was commonly used in this time period. I think there's a technical modern difference in receipt vs recipe in if there are instructions or just a list if ingredients but I'm a bit fuzzy on it.
Perhaps they used the willow bark charcoal as some kind of mordant? if it contained some amount of ashes, it would become some sort of lye, if mixed with water and let sit for some time?
As someone who just in the last two weeks bleached my whole head and went purple I totally see the fun of trying out different ways to dye hair.
I had coloured my hair a random mix of violet and cherry red on a whim. the red faded into pink. the violet did not fade at all. So I tried to bleach it out, somehow forgetting what should have been an unforgettable incident in the early 90s where my boss at a salon I used to work at asked me to dye, then bleach her hair against my (and other stylists') advice. Her hair turned pink, then somehow green. (as it does, if you know your colour theory 🤦) As did the once violet streaks in my hair. *sighs* The green did fade into mint and eventually faded out entirely, but hubby and my kids laughed their butts off. Especially as hubby knows the boss and about the incident. My hair is currently dye free but I'm getting the itch again... 🤔
Knowing Morgan later just shaved her whole head makes this video so much better for me, for some reason.
That was fun. Kudos to Morgan for being a willing experiment subject.
I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to think that Abby has an appreciation for the 1800s.
What an odd thing today, what on earth gave you that idea?!
pfft, that could never be
Raise your hand if you want an Abby Cox x Townsends collab
🙋♀️🙋♀️
That would be quite interesting; I'd definitely watch that!
Hells yeah!!
I was thinking about Townsends and the writer guy he had on there. I forget his name. He described how the same gall nuts are used for making ink 😃
That was fascinating! The citrus peel made me worry about photosensitivity, but then it didn’t touch skin so all good!
the other thing about the citrus peel is that they didn't give an amount to use, so I was just shooting in the dark with the amount that I used...gotta love historic recipes... 🤣
@@AbbyCox maybe it needed more orange peel
Or more cow bell.
@@jeannegreeneyes1319 definitely more cow bell
Hearing Morgan Donner say "fuck me up" is just really powerful.
I wonder if they used it as a paste to colour the hair temporarily when put up in a style, like a gel/hairspray to set and colour the hair for a posh do! If it set hard that would make sense especially when you said about being used in China, when you think of their sleek black hair style of times past.
OMG. That was epic. Morgan is such a trooper, for risking her pretty locks for this experiment.
I was super very impressed with that store-bought stuff, though. I color my hair with henna and Indigo every couple weeks and if you do that right, you can actually achieve a deep and lasting black color...but the whole procedure takes 4-5 hours and my scalp is discolored for at least a day afterwards.
I would love a non-oxidative haircolor, that does the trick in less than half an hour.
wait wait wait! if i dye my hair with indigo will i get the navy blue of my dreams? ( I assume you use henna and indigo bc the browny red and blue make a black?)
@@saritshull3909
Well, the thing with Indigo is...it doesn't adhere very well to the hair. I tried using just Indigo on my roots (ashy medium brown with a lot of white hairs) and got a very distinct bluish hue, but the color was uneven and kinda translucent, which resulted in more of a grayish blue, rather then black blue.
The trick to getting a natural looking and lasting black, is to dye with henna first (as hot as possible, min 30 min, but preferably longer). Henna sticks to hair really well and afterwards, you can then redye the copper pigments with the indigo (no hotter than 50*C, to avoid a greenish tint). I leave both on my hair for about 2 hours, covered tightly with saran wrap and a towel.
Afterwards, you rinse out your hair (no shampoo or conditioner!), let it dry and leave it alone till the next day, since the color continues to develop and deepen once in contact with oxygen from the air.
Then you can wash and condition as usual. Do not be concerned, if your hair feels dry and badly tangled during the wash out. That goes away, once it's dry, promise. Just leave the hair alone, no matter how messy it feels and looks.
The next day, after washing it properly, your hair will be incredibly silky, shiny and voluminous.
Now, my hair ends up deep black with only a hint of blue in certain light conditions that way. Probably because, as you said, it's a mixture of red and blue/black.
If Indigo alone will work for you, depends on your natural hair color. It can certainly produce a very blueish hue, but it will not necessarily fully cover your natural hair color, then. Or you could try dying several layers of Indigo. I rather like, that it produces such a natural looking result, so I never tried.
@@raraavis7782 Thank you for such a thorough answer. Do you reckon it would take in my bleached ends?
@@saritshull3909
I never tried it myself, but from what I've gathered from reading about other people's experiments, bleached hair tends to 'loose' pigments through repeated washing fairly quickly.
But that's mostly fashion haircolors...not sure, if it applies to henna and indigo. I can tell you, that for me the color is permanent. No trace of it in the wash water after the second wash or so and no fading or such, at all. But again, I can't vouch for the result, if you use just Indigo. You will likely have to dye it several times then, so the color can accumulate in layers. The good news is, if you buy it in ethnic grocery stores, it's not expensive at all. And it really doesn't hurt the hair. I do this every 3 weeks to cover my roots, with no ill effects at all. It's just a messy, time consuming procedure.
@@raraavis7782 Thanks
I'll definitely investigate a bit further :)
Haha. This is how we do this. I get it girl, I dyed my friend’s hair red with henna without gloves after telling people all day long remember gloves & to not just used your hands. But 10th Kingdom, baking & henna cannot ve stopped.
10th Kingdom reference, I don't know you but I love you kthxbye
"when I say rare, I mean let it look at the oven in terror then bring it to me!"
I dye the yarn I spin black with gull nut and oak twigs and as a mordent I use arm and hammer washing soda and get it as hot as I can without felting my yarn. I bet it did need ammonia because a lot of older technics use old pee.But I'm not an expert on hair I just do yarn and fabric.
I love your channel. I don't know how to sew, but I love history and the time periods you go cover. Thank you so much!! This video was really interesting. I've always wondered how or if they would pamper like we do in salons
“Sometimes you’re the windshield, and sometimes you’re the bug”… my life explained in a nut shell.
You guys have so much fun together! BTW, I was surprised you didn't know what makes the galls. Hahahahahahaha
LOL nope - never something I've ever studied or even thought about until I was seeing their tiny carcasses float to the top and Nicole was like "Um duh?" 🤣
@@AbbyCox I have used oak galls to color wool, but it makes more of a soft golden brown color, more like the actual color of Morgans hair.
Abby Cox listening to Butter at an extremely high volume makes me so happy. Abby Cox and BTS make for a happy Sunday for Catherine
I heard that Butter too haha!
I've been using henna now for over a year. It's a bit hit or miss with getting it right. But it's still 100% better then a box dye.
using one brand of body art quality henna that you like can help you standardize things. henna is also very dependent on the colour you're dying over because it's transparent. think like a red cellophane. if you put it over white you're going to get a very bright colour. put it over black and you'll barely see a change. build up layers and you'll see it get darker. i've been doing henna for years and i just had to bleach some streaks to remove some of the layers and layers of henna that had slowly gotten a lot darker than i wanted. from now on i'll just be doing henna on the roots and giving the length more gloss and thickness with cassia
I always wrapped my head in plastic wrap, then foil, then covered it with a towel for about an hour. The heat from your head helps it penetrate.
@@lenabreijer1311 I just always did plastic wrap because otherwise you get it everywhere while it sits in your head 😂
I wrapped mine in plastic and then heated with a blow dryer for 20 minutes. Then wrapped in paper towels and covered with a shower cap. I left all of that on for an hour or two. I added aloe vera juice and lemon juice to mine, too. The white hair turned out bright Celtic red and the dark brown turned out vibrant dark auburn. It was very permanent, too. (I just cut it all off to go gray. 😱)
@@anyascelticcreations yes that is what I liked when I first went grey too. You got all these lovely varieties of colour. You get that with colours like blue and purple and green to. The grey goes neon coloured and the brown was dark. But now it is nearly all white so it doesn't play anymore.
"Black, Fern Gully goo" yes, that feels accurate.
I've seen galls out in the wild around here. It's from an insect, I think a wasp, that plants it's babies into a stem or small branch. As their babies grow in said stem, it swells up! They hatch and fly away to do buggy things, but the gall is left behind. I'm only recalling this from memory as I've been told by naturalists.
Good grief, I paused the video just before your "google" search in order to type my knowledge into this realm -_- hahah!
Hold up, did I just hear Morgan Donner say “fuck me up”?!?
I’m now officially dying 🤣
Gall nuts were/are also used for fountain pen inks! the tannic acid from the galls reacts with oxigen to form a dark pigment, and changes colours while you write, pretty cool to watch! They are higher maintenance than standard inks but they are waterproof, which is probably why they were so popular in the past.
As for the hairdye, it makes sense to let it dry on the hair as it needs to react with the oxigen in the air, and it can't do this while still wet. Gallotanic acid is also a weak acid (perhaps you could get a pH-meter to measure the acidity of your concoction?), which might explain the way her hair felt afterwards, as acid might damage the hair fibers. I also believe that the nature of the chemical reaction is the reason it doesn't hold very well, since it's just a pigment that forms after oxigenation, it doesn't actually bind with the hair, it's just laying on top of the hair fibers. When galls are used in inks they are paired with iron salts to strengthen the colour, though they are known to be pretty unstable colours that can fade etc.
Perhaps this was the equivalent of a temporary hair dye of the past with easily accesible ingredients? I could imagine someone wanting to cover up white hairs or something and just using galls which can be found on most trees. All in all, a very interesting experiment, definitely giving me a lot of food for thought! x
I love that Morgan is such a good sport about this!
Just wondering if, since people didn’t wash their hair often, it was intended to be a temp color? And the natural oils may have helped with the shiny factor?
The majestic shenanigans that y'all do bring me joy. Thank you Morgan for putting your hair on the line for this and thank you Abby for going down this rabbit hole.
Morgan is such a trooper man
In my experience of dyeing protein fibers naturally, there's an acid missing that would make this more permanent. I wouldn't suggest it, but dousing hair to be dyed in lemon juice or vinegar might help.
The other solution I know is soda ash, but that's more for bast fibers than proteins.
I wonder if the "salt" in the recipe was supposed to be iron salts like used in ink. Here is the chemistry from Wikipediaen.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_gall_ink
This was also my guess
That makes so much more sense. The only other purpose for the salt I could think of was that it was their way of making it gel like substance that made it easier to apply. It seems like they took a recipe for ink to adapt for hair, not realizing they were creating a colorant that would just sit on the hair shaft rather than being absorbed.
It could have been to ionize the gall pigment if water was the solute instead of oil. It is possible that there was a large amount of iron in the salt the author was using and they didn't know it.
If one boils something containing a lot of salt in a bare iron pot (i.e. not enameled as Abby's was) there will be iron in the result, perhaps a significant amount of iron after and hour and 36 minutes
Glad I looked to see if someone else noticed that! I wonder as well.
There's a French cooking technique called confit which basically means to cook in fat. That's more or less what you did to the insect sex tree balls. It's making me giggle quite a lot that you confit-ed to get hair dye. There's a pun in there somwhere.
Yes, that’s what I was thinking too - confit I mean.
And then a second later I laughed when the brand of cooker used was Comfee.
I had to go online to investigate.
The end results had them confit-ed to be tied.
@@LostKat you found the pun! I applaud you.
I'm glad you looked up what gallnuts were before posting. Also, I think what they mean by bruising is the recipe was asking for fresh gallnuts. Like others have said, it's a traditional component for making some inks. Just on the fact that the gallnuts weren't fresh I didn't expect it to work
💄I remember trying to hide my white “skunk stripe” along my center part of black hair while portraying the 1860’s. My thought process was “Oh no! Visitors will see it’s a dead giveaway that I color my hair, aka “modern”.
I actually used to swipe my finger inside the globes of the oil lamps for the black soot which I used to “fill in” my part. No period reference, just my own necessity borning invention.
Imagine my surprise when I learned that “The Original Cast” colored their hair too, and it usually came out black!🤦🏻♀️
I think I will stick with Revlon Colorsilk for now, but thank you for the effort 😂!💋
LOL I remember teasing my Mom for her skunk streak...so you can imagine my horror and shock when I started developing one (along with wings above the ears...) in my late 20s....I started to dye my hair...but then a friend let my Mom in on the secret and I got teased about being a hybrid Bride of Frankenstein and Grampa Munster! LOL
@@kennashey I had already been coloring my hair since High School so I didn’t see my natural color much, but I caught my first glint of gray in the rear view mirror of my car at 21. Who knows how long it had been there?
I’m in my early 20s with just brown hair, but I always find gray/white highlights really pretty 😍
Hair shenanigans 😯
Morgan is so brave.
I haven't even watched it yet, but I already liked it because I'm this happy to see you! I have pretty hard Sunday and even harder week ahead of me, so I just can't wait for this 20min of fun
I loved Chrissy's serious comments in the background. She sounded really interested! And so nice that she came with you.
Also, you gals have guts 😂
Oooo, now I want to see all those wacky recipes you mentioned around 1:55 , too. How about buying a wig or some natural weave hair and trying on that?
The references! The Morgan! The experiments! Abby does it again, wonderful video tysm!
"No feedback please" is how I'm living for the rest of 2021
Every thumbnail is gold. And these videos are just delightful.
Living for the Ferngully references
That was a fun experiment, and I love how chill Morgan was with the whole process!
"Fugg me up" LMAO I love Morgan even more now!!
This kind of video is my JAM I don't even care that it didn't work, this is my favorite kind of history stuff--it's basically experimental archeology and that is my favorite thing in the whole world
Died when Morgan said "fuck me up." 🤣🤣🤣🤣 proper girls weekend!
10:29 aww the dog looked like it needed a hug🥺so cute
Amazed tsa didn’t inspect your jar of weird, once I packed like 6 jams triple bagged and they inspected ALL of them. So triple bag weird jars at your own risk haha
I love how Abby was rocking those confy 90's sandals! I hadn't seen a pair of them in the longest time ever.
Btw Morgan is the MVP for volunteering her hair 💗
Yay Morgan! You were a temporary squid.
When you said natural hair dye, I actually expected you to say walnuts. I know that's been used as a natural brown dye, but I don't know a ton of the details. I've never heard of gall nuts, but thank you for introducing me to insect sex tree balls 😂
Do you use the shells?
Oh man. The Ferngully reference was beautiful.
Yeah, I’m not surprised that there was no change to the hair because there was nothing in the dye to change the texture or remove the natural color. The charcoal was only there to cover the hair shaft. Because there was no catalyst to change the hair shaft structure, like a bleach, it was going to be easy to remove.
I was hoping the gall nuts would do *something* since they're used to make ink, but yeah....that was a nope.
Isn't that what the willow bark would be for, since it is acidic?
Well, there are plants that will color hair without an oxidant/bleach.
I dye my hair black (from medium brown!) with henna and indigo. It redults in a deep, black, lasting color, if you do it right. You can't even tell, it's dyed.
No idea, why those plant extracts adhere so well to the hairshaft and these here didn't. I was honestly surprised, there was no discoloration at all.
The most efficient way to do this is to layer Henna, then indigo, if possible several times, for a dark and permanent black.
An extra layer of henna can help seal the pigment so it doesn't wash out. Gallnut is sometimes added to henna to make it browner, unless I'm mistaken (brou de noix ou noix de lavage in French). I've never tried tho.
Varying degrees of indigo or mixing it with henna gives brown.
Iron oxide stain is also a good black stain for wood and fabric, I don't know if it can be used for hair but I have no doubt it would likely be changed or stained partially
I wonder if, on hair that wasn’t clean and had maybe been oiled and then was going to be put up in one of those elaborate coiffures, if the historical formula would work in a way? It certainly seems like it would dampen down red hair if that was undesirable at the time.
I love it when I catch glimpses of your Blue Willow China. Would love a dress or something inspired by that, or maybe just a history of it with the cute little love story they made up for it!
"Are you ready for this?"
"FUCK ME UP"
I love Morgan haha she's awesome 😂😂
Loved this video! Watching Abby deal with gall nuts and trying to "bruise" them...! As someone else commented, if the gall nuts were fresh, actual bruising, as opposed to breaking, may have been possible. Maybe when the willow bark charcoal
arrives, Abby could try this again with fresh galls? Definitely an interesting experiment!
Yes I think so too! Boiling them in oil to soften them makes much more sense if it's fresh ones, with the dried ones it probably would have been better to boil them in water and leave them to soak a while instead.
YAY BTS!!!!
Morgan you are a queen :) Abby those glasses!!!!!
So much fun! Thank you for sharing this video!
"Dingy" she says, while describing my exact natural shade of ashy dark brown. How dare. The very gall you have.
Fashion and beauty history is so fascinating. We are so spoiled today with our connivence.
With the historic dye it makes me wonder how long it would last because I know the Victorians didn’t wash their hair as often as we do now, so with brushing it out it makes me wonder if it actually meant to be black dye or darkening. But it didn’t look good as they said so who knows lolol
I’m glad to hear you mention henna. You can use a henna base with indigo and achieve black. For white, Gray, or blonde hair, prime with an application of pure red henna following the product’s directions. Rinse, towel dry, and apply the indigo. Always do a strand test! I used to work with talking people through the process of using Light Mountain Henna Hair Color and it works!
The gall of those nuts...
(I think it's safe to say no one is going to try this at home)
The hair dye or the pun?
I’d never pass up an opportunity for a good pun.
They really took the time to make this hair dye back then.. the whole process 😲 That's crazy!! And look at where we are at now. What an advancement! Seeing this was so cool! We've came a long way 🙂
So, I know it felt super lame, but look at it another way: it's olde fashioned hair spray. Like... Fully wash out colour. The kind of hair makeup we find very modern was totally an option if you felt like having dark hair for literally a day.
I am so hyped up for this! This is what the internet needs