Half bucket of walnuts and hulls, boiled for about an hour over wood fire, did nice dark dye job. Used my old smart cooker to melt wax and waxed the traps.
Worked great. Ready to rock and roll!

Organizing everything...


Smart cooker and wax...


Simmering some traps...


Individual traps after dye and waxed....

Vic #3s dyed and before wax...



Vic #3 after wax...


Bridger 1.65...


Montana #2 with step down pit pan...


MB 550...


Duke 160s cabled to stabilizers, dyed and not waxed.


Bridger #3 dyed and waxed.

Gottem looking good

Nothing looks better than a dyed and waxed trap. You almost hate to set them!

Looks good I need to get on that. Season for coyote and fox opened yesterday but I normally don't set tell January. To busy hunting before that and I don't like having to let coons and opossum lose plugging up my sets. I trap to remove them from on the farm.

So how many walnuts do you suppose were used?
I've been hulling walnuts in the cement mixer and have powdered hulls. I've been dying with walnut hulls for years and never paid any attention how many do a good job dying.
just

That looks like a nice way to wax and an easy way to control the temperature

Not sure how many walnut I used. I didn't crush them or anything just picked half a five gallon bucket off ground from couple local trees and put whole thing in hull and all.
When I poured off the pan at end of the day after it cooled, the dye water and walnut gunk remaining was pitch black.
The smart cooker for waxing is slow, it takes awhile to heat up a full cooker of wax but it holds the temp nicely at liquid point with no flame. Just have to plan ahead and plug it in and set temp and time a couple hours ahead of when you are firing up the dye fire. Does a nice job just leave the traps in until same temp as the wax and they come out perfectly every time.
When done just let it cool back to solid state and lock the lid back on...put it up on shelf again until next fall. Pretty simple.
Now i just have to remove wax from trigger points on dogs and pan notches and im ready to rock and roll. Planning to start around Thanksgiving.
Jim

How many traps did you do? They look pretty good, I would have thought you would need more walnuts than a half of a 5 gallon bucket.

What’s your go to temp on that insta pot?

I dyed 200 traps yesterday with just that half bucket. The dye got darker as I went.

Mine tops out around 200 degrees, I set it at 176 at and it worked great. Put setting to warm and ran it all day at that temp safely.

Traps simmerring...



While waiting in between traps cycling through waxing process, I was able to get other stuff done. Got weasel boxes ready. We don't have many here and I know a couple folks near here that have taken them. This will be my little side trapline along same areas where I'm coyote trapping. Got 10 boxes ready to go.

Way to go Jim, got mine done Friday , 105 yotee traps, I'm going to get after the bandits first, I set a goal for 350, then hit the coyote try and get to the three digit, we'll see.