I have about 5 years total into the hobby. (Still very much a rookie) Only about to finish my first kit, but I have completed a few ARFs.

I thought I'd share my little adventure this weekend on tinting a canopy using both methods discussed. The only thing I had to go on is the information from this forum.

I found a little canopy to an unknown plane on the 'dollar' table at my local hobby store and thought I'd use that to test the Pactra Black Window Tint. After cleaning and masking it off, I started to spray. My main problem was that I couldn't get an even looking finish. At the time I didn't think about wiping it out with a rubbing alcohol, so it ended up being way too dark for my tastes.

It's hard to show it but you can still see through it... barely...


Time to try the Rit-Dye.


I don't even want to begin to think what the wife would say to me if I got this stuff on something in the house, so I used three buckets for this. (#1 dye, #2 - rinse / check the color, #3 - final rinse) The water temps. were between 130-140 F, and using a lid really helped maintain this temp. After 2 hours the water had only dropped about 10 degrees.

I tried adding the salt, vinegar, and tapping my shoes three times saying there is no tint like home.. there is no tint like home.. The problem is that after the first hour or so, that's about all the darker it was going to get. After every two hours I would make a new batch of water / dye and bring the temp. back up to 140F, but it didn't seem to matter.

I did finally end up making a strong batch of 24 oz. of the liquid dye (that's six boxes of the powder btw), tossed in about 6 cups of vinegar, and 6 cups of salt. This was all done in about 4 gallons of water. I found the same results with one bottle of 8 oz. dye as I did with all the other versions. (I did end up leaving it down all night on the last batch. The test canopy that got the spray while the sun was still up, is laughing and mocking me this whole time.)

So it's not the dye. It's not the mixture. It's how hot the water is. Remember I said I melted my first one, because I made the water too hot... But the color was good.. (not that I could use it.. I'm just saying.. it did have good color.. )


I'm not suggesting there is a number one right answer.

If anyone has any suggestions on how I can improve on either method, I would be interested.

The picture of the Funtana canopy is how dark I wanted this one to be.