anybody ever dye snakeskins?

[shortstroke 91]

was thinking about backing my longbow and thought it might be neet to dye some rattlesnake skins so that the lighter areas are brown.
Also thought about trying the chamelion effect with green, brown and black on an angle. What do you think?
Any info would be helpful.

thanks

[Gordy]

I think I've seen a build-along where someone dyed or painted the limb underneath. It was a self-bow though.

I wonder if you could do that on glass somehow ?

Might be neat to do black near the handle faded through brown red yellow towards the tips !  

[John Scifres]

I do it when needed, especially on canebrakes which often have really light areas that don't look great.  I use anilline dyes most of the time but RIT works also.

[Orion]

I've used an alcohol based dye to darken the flesh side of the skin before gluing onto the bow.  Yields a darker finished skin with the lighter markings on a diamondback skin, for example, really standing out.  Don't want to overdo it with the dye/stain though.

[John Scifres]

These skins were dyed.  I played around with black and red until I got what I wanted.        

[Eric Krewson]

If you use TB2 to glue them on the yellow will show through the skin and screw up the natural color. I use Elmer's stainable carpenters glue which is a neutral tan and doesn't change the normal skin color.

[ethan]

I used black glass on the back of a set of limbs so my copperhead skins would show up better.  They came out so black you couldn't even tell they were skinned.  Had to have a taxidermist buddy air-brush them.