I trimmed my smoke tree today and collected a pile of sticks that I think might have enough dye material in them to be worth holding on to.
Next step: shaving off the sapwood to expose the heartwood (the part that actually contains dye). I approximately highlighted the heartwood in blue in the second photo above. As you can see, it's not a large percentage of the total stick... and this is a pretty good stick.
After I finish getting the heartwood out, I can weigh it to learn how much fiber I can dye. For most plant-based dyes, the recommendation is for 50%-100% weight of dye to weight of fiber. So if I end up with 10 grams of heartwood, I can dye between 10 and 20 grams of fiber.
