Like all
Honestly I had never done it before but saw a brief note of it in one of my books and had a handful of old walnuts sitting on my counter for months, so gave it a shot. This was only ~10 crushed walnut husks steeped in boiling water for 4-5 hrs. A very weak tea. Strained through a coffee filter.
If I did it again I would want a stronger solution for more immediately compelling results, but I agree that the prolonged soak achieved a pretty nice result. Pre-washed the dried cyanotype (was dry for around 20hrs) in tap water and then soaked it face down in the walnut tea for ~10hrs. The samples that I bleached did not turn out desirably.
Ha, Randy--speaking of dyes and Civil War trivia, the folks in your part of the world used to be called "Butternuts" because they used white walnut (Juglans cinrea) to dye their homespun linen. (The connection with the famous "butternut" brown/gray of CSA uniforms was more about the color association than actual manufacture, though.)
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