Sumac works great. I just hose off the traps after boiling. The loose dye doesn't do anything anyway and it gets rid of any seeds sticking to them.

the mess doesn't hurt a thing, shake the trap and any debris falls off.

This time of year, wait a few weeks til the maples start to leaf out and gather new leaves, or walnut leaves or any tannin bearing leaves at about half growth stage, sumac berries are only at their best in late summer and by fall have rotted or leached out the tannin. The bark of any tannin bearing tree will work any time.

The thing about a sack Is you can put a rock In It and It stays on the bottom and you don't have all those berries floating around on top. And clean up Is so much easier.
It's the same with bark or leaves why have them floating around on top.

The Beav is right as usual. So there! Go Beav.

Yup, what Beav said. A bag will control the mess.

Don't put them on top. Put them in the bottom pack the traps on top of them. No floaters.

If you use enough leaves or berries the tub will be full of them, that is no room for both traps and leaves full, cook them a bit (15-20 minutes at simmer after boil) and let set overnight, then reheat and separate the vegetable from the liquid extract and cook the traps in the tannin.

I believe the biggest reason that people don't get good results with tannin is not using enough tannin to get a strong solution and not leaving the traps in the solution long enough for the tannin to work. For best results, bring the traps to a boil and let set a couple hours or overnight and then bring to a boil again before removing the hot traps to the hot wax. Repeat for as many traps as you have, this takes a good deal of time, but most of the time you don't need to be there.
If I do all my traps the total time is about 12-14 hours over three days.
I also believe that most who read this will pay no heed and rush through the process with 30% enough tannin and later say "it didn't work for me".

If you try to do it all the same day, you might as well skip it and do what Beav does, use latex paint. Or take Larry Sills advice and let 'em rust to a patina.

Good post

I use douglas fir bark and it works great. Lots of other sources that would work also.

https://www.braintan.com/barktan/2tannins.htm

I've never dyed with sumac before. Is this seed head ready to be picked for dyeing or do I need to wait? Some patches of sumac are still almost all green. Others look more like this one.

When I used it I think it was more into Sept,but I wouldn't be shy about doing it now with those tops.

Thanks, I may wait a couple weeks, since I'm not in too big of a hurry.

Mesh laundry bags work really well to. I get the best black color from swamp maple. It grows like a weed around here and I use a beaver fleshing tool to peel the bark off.

I used sumac (berries, leaves and several other kinds of leaves) a bunch of times, with zero mess and the trick is to use the mesh bags making cottage cheese, if you have enough vegetable matter in the cooker to get a strong tannin solution there won't be room for traps, or the mesh bags, unless the cooker is a 50 gallon barrel- you need equal volume more or less of sumac heads and traps- - try this for real results; pack the cooking tub full of sumac berries or walnut hulls or tannin bearing leaves (walnut maple oak etc) , plant parts/vegetable matter, mash it down a bit and cover it with water; bring to boil for 30 minutes and cool over night; then remove the plant matter and save the "tea" -this is the tannin solution- now load the cooker of tannin solution with as many traps as will fit, boil 10 minutes and let set at least several hours till mostly cool; then bring back to boil and remove the traps one by one to very hot wax, leave it wax til the bubbles of steam stop indicating that all water is displaced by hot wax (oil); then remove the trap from the wax and hang to cool. It is not fast and it is work and it will use fuel, but the result will be a trap with no rust that can be stored for years and will not rust.
Tannin dying and wax are storage prep.

If you want fast easy and cheap dip the traps or paint them, it won't help much with rust (because rust grows under the paint or dip unless neutralized) but traps are cheap, compared to a hundred years ago.

If you are going to use the traps within a month it won't matter a lot what you do, because the critters will clean them of what ever prep you did- in the first catch.

Stag horn sumac branches with the bark on them works. I used to use lopping shears to cut pieces a few inches long and throw them in the boil. after they were in a while it was pretty easy to get most of them out. Hemlock branches work the same. And you can use walnuts as they are right now.
I have never used oak, but if you handle the boards as the come off a saw in a mill, your hands will be blue/black in a short period of time.

I have always used Red Oak sawdust, I am a lumber Inspector at a saw mill so it's free. I put enough sawdust to basically fill half of my 5 gallon pot in a pillow case and boil it for an hour or so, I then let it cool overnight and squeeze all the water out of the sawdust that I can back into my pot. I add about two dozen traps and top off with some more water, bring to boil for an hour and let cool off overnight and my traps are a real dark blueish black. You could probably stop by a hardwood sawmill and they will give you a couple bucks of sawdust for free.

A ladies stocking works great for the summac berries.