By the steep the impurities, dirt and grease, covering the feather are loosened, and thereby the following cleaning operations materially facilitated.
CLEANING AND BLEACHING OF FEATHERS.
The ostrich feathers, like all material taken from the covering of the animal body, wool, hair, etc., which are embellished by dyeing for the use of man or woman in dress, contain by nature a certain amount of fat, and in their raw condition are more or less covered with dust, dirt and a greasy exudation, which must be removed for dyeing; that is, they are scoured or washed and then bleached or whitened, because the feathers, like all other so-called white animal matter, have always a faint yellowish tint, sometimes yellowish spots which cannot be removed without injury to the material, but obliterated by bleaching, which, in the case of white feathers, is called bleaching or whitening. The bleaching of gray and black feathers and the stripping or decoloring of dyed feathers are different operations.
For scouring or washing, novel methods are recommended, which, however, differ from one another very little, and are, on the whole, represented by the following: Prepare a good handwarm bath (100-120° F.), in which dissolve two ounces Marseilles soap in per gallon of water and beat up to a good lather. Enter feathers and rub them well, string for string, by hand. They may even be taken upon a wash-board and rubbed with a brush, which does not hurt them, notwithstanding their delicate structure, because the soap steep has given them great elasticity and resistance to the manipulation. Continue the operations until the tank is exhausted and dirty; then give another fresh bath of the same composition and temperature; treat the feathers as in the first bath and rinse them perfectly clean from every particle of soap in two or three luke-warm (100°) waters; for, every trace of soap remaining upon the feathers will hinder the dye from running up and cause uneven colors, or, upon white feathers, yellow stains. Then prepare a cold bath with solution of bioxolate of potash (one-eighth to one-sixth ounce of salt to one gallon), enter feathers, pass them in the bath for 15-20 minutes, take up and rinse them in cold water three to four times to remove the salt. For feathers which have to remain white, the latter bath is composed of one and one-quarter ounces bioxolate of potash and one and one-eighth ounces oxalic acid to one gallon of water, and the feathers laid down in it until perfectly white; when they are taken out and rinsed clean from acid in luke-warm water.
The feathers being rinsed clean from the oxolate of potash bath, if destined for white, are then whitened, or rather blued, for the purpose of covering the yellowish tint above mentioned. To this purpose a cold bath is prepared with only so much methyl violet or methylene blue, as to give the water a very faint tint. To ascertain whether this is the case, a white china plate is held about a foot below the surface of the bath, when its appearance will show the shade of blue that will be produced by the bath. The feathers are then entered and gently agitated in the bath until they have the desired tint.
DRYING OR STARCHING.
The feathers coming from the bioxolate of potash bath, after rinsing, or from the blue baths, are squeezed out by pulling them through the hand, and pressing them between the laps of a dry clean piece of white muslin, whereupon they are immediately passed through a bath of raw starch, that is, unboiled starch, consisting of about one-half pound of starch to a gallon of water. After passing them through the hand the feathers are then again pressed between the cloth; then the waves are lightly drawn by hand over the stems, and the feathers either beaten between the hands or upon a clean board over a stove until dry, or they are agitated by hand or by a suitable mechanical contrivance before an open fire or gas-jet, or hung in a warm room and frequently shaken until dry, that is, until all starch has dropped out; and finally the remaining starch is beaten out between the hands or upon the board by means of a soft brush. By this treatment the feathers are not only dried, but the flues opened besides. It needs not to be specially mentioned, that the feathers are dried, or finished, as it were, in the same manner after dyeing.
In case the flues are not sufficiently opened, although all the starch has been beaten out, dip the feathers into clean benzine and swing or agitate them until dry, which takes place in a few minutes, while the flues are opened in the most perfect manner. For white feathers the benzine may be blued, but in this case, they must be dried between muslin.