Let the mixing begin. I only wore my mask till all the powders were wetted out and not floating in the air. Now watching the heat. A watched vat does not get hot fast. Thanks to everyone that mixed before me in the February class by Elisabeth so I could ponder the process. Here is a link to her classes.
Ferrous sulfate and calcium hydroxide measured out. Got an idea of dry volume and water needed to dissolve.
Pasted indigo gets one more stir to suspend pigment in the water. I left it overnight to let lumps soften & settle.
Vessels have heated water and ingredients added to dissolve
Mental note, this vat has an indent on the bottom I need to stir into and around. Wish I had measured the width before I started dumping ingredients into the vat. There is always an “if only”.
And splat! I wish I could set up neat & tidy but I always find a way to drip with large vats.
Pasting the leftover lumps. This is washed & dried pigment from my large Fructose vat. I wash my old fructose paste with 9% vinegar to remove the calcium carbonate and drain thru filters. Solely for the purpose of removing sludge volume and storage. We will find out how the pigment works after washing on a large scale.
My plan is to find out if same process works for “iron sludge”. I do NOT know if this process works for iron vat sludge or the chemical impact, yet. I need to create some iron sludge. Hence this vat is starting up. The Sapa indigo dyers use their pigment season to season in a wood ash vat. I decided to try using vinegar to reduce the calcium in a sludge reduction effort and clean up for use.
Old lady way of moving water from point A to point B
Nice & soupy, time to stir.
Stirring & stirring
Now I heat & wait for reduction. My sticks that support my heater are sitting on the handle indents within the bucket. No holes were made. I suppose holes would be safer. To me, if the sticks were left in place in the holes not much heat would escape. More importantly, I would be concerned with disturbing the structural integrity of the bucket sides by putting holes into the plastic. I am leaning towards putting holes or screw eyes in sticks and hold sticks by tying the handle. Right now I am still developing a relationship with my vat configuration. I’ll improve later.
debmcclintock 
Hi Deb,
I love following your progress of the iron vat. Your pictures and explanations are great. I’d saw your vat is looking good! Thanks for this wonderful blog!
Jody McKenzie
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Thank you for the detailed processing and pics. I have been holding some old dried sludge from a fructose vat and was wondering about the recycling with a different type of vat (123 or chemical). You’ve given me some encouragement to start experimenting.
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Glad to inspire you, check out the vinegar section in this blog post. https://debmcclintock.me/2021/07/05/indigo-yield-testing-in-texas/
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Hi Deb. I enjoy your blog. I have two questions for you 1. It sounds like you are heating your iron vat with a bucket heater. Is this necessary? I understood that was a benefit of ferrous vat… starting it with hot water then it reduces and will perform well at room temperature. 2. Are you actually recapturing the indigo pigment from spent vats( you mentioned a fructose vat). I have tossed them out in past. And the sludge that forms in a ferrous vat is quite deep, and becomes bothersome. I’ve read that after three or so weeks you are better off throwing it out and starting fresh
Ps I live in upstate NY and grow Persicaria, and usually reduce my extraction vats to a thick paste for later use Jeanne Cease Naples Ny
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the class taught by Elisabeth takes us thru some start up heating and rebalance heating to some degree. It’s is a lot less than needed for my fructose vat. But still involves heat. I do not know if vinegar rinsing will work for the iron vat. I plan to try. I found the vinegar rinse very useful after flocculating my Suffruticosa. it reduces the bulk of the paste drastically
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Also read my comment about the Yield & Vinegar blog post in previous comments
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Gosh what a job that is!!!
Once you get it started it does last the whole summer though so it’s definitely worth it.
Thanks so much for sharing with us Deb. You are an inspiration to us as well as a good teacher🙏👍😊
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