I have a bunch of old ACUs, no longer in the Army. I want to dye them to make them suitable (or more suitable) for woodland. Anyone ever do this?
No but I would like to see what you end up with?
cant says i have but start with light green and work your way darker. go to dark to quick and youll have black
Try bleaching some.
Back in the late seventies when Iran was taken over by the extremists, the Ranger Bns were on standby to go to Iran to destroy some AA missiles that we didn’t want to fall into the hands of the Russians. It never happened, but we were instructed to use bleach on our camo to turn it more brown to better fit in. We never did it, but I wonder if it would work with ACUs…
I will eventually get around to tryin this since I have a couple of uniform items from Iraq that are trashed. Don’t hold you breath though, nothing gets done in this household very fast.
dont be mad if I beat you to it I’m laid off and have a whole tuff box full
Won’t bother me at all. Would be cool to see what others get anyway.
Bleach can seriously degrade cotton and many synthetics, makes them sort of worn out.
Way back when we made our black SWAT uniforms out of BDUs and black RIT dye, worked rather well but you could still see a pattern on the cloth.
Personally I’d try the RIT in whatever color I was looking to get.
I wish I could figure out how to replicate WW2 mustard type of OD. Its amazing how well the old GI uniforms items blend in the woods around here. I’ve seen some coyote brown gear that is real close in coloration.
I bleached BDU’s before. They ended up a lighter shade. The brown was tan/rust color. Different looking. Dying ACU’s would be interesting. I would try brown or drk green dye on them.
I tried this thinking I would dye them black.
I just bought a bottle of the over the counter dye and boiled a big ole pot of water per the directions.
I used the amount of dye recommended but the only came out a charcoal type color.
Not what I was expecting but I gotta say that I actually prefer that they did not turn BLACK.
I have found that they don’t stand out and are more useful in a wider range of light conditions.
I live in the North east in the mountains and while green and brown are the primary colors summer time the gray black duskiness of these seem to be OK year round.
I actually think they are better than the original color scheme.
I actually think they are better than the original color scheme.
If you are talking ACUs then it don’t take much to better.
Yeah after I wrote that I thought… Hmmm I didn’t really offer much there. 
Ah well.
Any reason to think that dyeing ABUs would produce any different a result than dyeing ACUs?
I traded mine (duffle bag full) to a surplus store for about $150 in store credit
Ok, and how does this relate to the question of dyeing ACUs? 
Oh, and welcome to the forum…
that theres better things to do with acus than try to dye them
Sell at Army/Navy store
Buy Multicam “ACU” set
Much easier
It MIGHT be the better option, and then use the money to buy something new in an appropriate color of your choosing…after wearing the ACUs for 2 years straight in Astan, I’m not sure their durability warrants the extra effort in recoloring them…
I think this is the route I’d go or even see if you could trade them straight across for some older style BDU’s.