DISASTER!!!!!!!!!!
My experiment with half pies failed miserably.
I can't believe how bad they turned out....see for yourself
The circled one was an attempt at using tape to create one 1" spot. The heat cooked the tape off for the most part.
So I get everything set up in my garage on the wood stove because I mentioned doing this experiment to my wife and she mumbled something about her counters, my genitals, and calling her father. So instead of asking I just went out there....which was a really good move on my part.
The problems were few but extreme!
#1. Controlling the heat. I did think this would be my biggest issue, it turned out to be the smallest. I had blocks of steel set up to raise and lower and pan if I saw the water getting to hot. They would have worked if I had gotten that far. When I went to adjust the heat after about 3 min I spilled at least a 1/3 of the liquid out. Yeah it was bad. Real bad.
#2. Evaporation. Yea this was something I thought of because as a kid we always put a large pot of water on our wood stove so the air wasn't so dry. Within 5 min I had evaporated at least 1/4 of the liquid. I totally did not expect this. The water started to boil in just about 3 min which is much faster than I had anticipated. The evaporation also left a crust on some of the chips, it came off easily, but was still a pain.
#3. Setting up multiple jigs to keep the chips only half way in the liquid. The pans I purchased were small, too small in fact for the method I had planned on using but I figured as a first time experiment it would be fine(skewers with clothes pins). When I tried to get the chips only half way in it turned out the they wouldn't rest on the sides of the pan. So after some more rigging I got them to rest in about the right place. But when I went to transfer them to the pan they wouldn't stay upright. Therefore I got more than half the chip in the dye.
#4. Mixing the dye. The color was rose pink. I use way to much for the amount of water that I had. I could have used at least 1/2 as much as I did. Next time I will be mixing the entire batch per the directions then adding the liquid to the pan. The really dark spots are most definitely spots where a clump of dye settled on the chip. That can't happen again!
Okay enough with the sob story.....I will be making another attempt over the weekend once I get some things straightened out with my process. I will probably end up using the tape method, but using a different type of tape. If that fails I will be just dyeing them solid.
Thanks for reading, I will keep everyone posted.
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