GORUCK Coyote Ruck Dye Guide

The other day Shea Antoinette blew my mind by dropping the most awesome dye-your-ruck style guide over on the GORUCK Tribe page and on Reddit.

I asked her if she’d give us a little write-up and allow us to share the guide. She graciously obliged.

If you’re looking to dye a Coyote GORUCK bag, you need this!

Shea Antoinette’s Ultimate Coyote Cordura Dye Guide

By Shea Antoinette

Back in December, I dyed my Coyote Rucker 3.0 green.

Why? When I did it, GORUCK only offered 3 colors for the Rucker 3.0 and I don’t like having the same generic color as everyone else (see: my gold and scarlet Rucker and my white turned teal Rucker).

With the Rucker 3.0 I was wary about the reflective band, but after seeing Ruck.Beers post on Reddit about dying his GORUCK Rucker 3.0 and I felt pretty good about the ruck keeping its material integrity.

After I dyed it, during the local group events the following months, I was getting questions about if a certain dye would work or not. Then someone posted my dyed ruck and sandbag on the GORUCK Tribe page the requests/questions rolled in even more.

So I took one for the team and bought a big ole roll of 1000Denier Cordura in GORUCK coyote and set out to figure things out. FOR SCIENCE!

Testing Different Dye Colors for the Rucker

In addition to a swatch of Coyote Cordura, I decided in the process to dye a swatch of cotton (to compare to a normal, natural fabric), a swatch of felt (that i hoped would mimic the patch panel) and a strip of paracord since some people wrap paracord around their handles and may want to be matchy matchy.

To dye my Coyote Rucker 3.0, hip belt, sternum strap and 2 sandbags, I used about 6 Gallons of constantly boiling water, 2 Bottles of Rit DyeMore for Synthetics, 2 tsp of dishwashing liquid and in a 32 QT crawfish pot on my stove.

For the experiment, I dialed the recipe back as best as I could so I used 2 cups of water, 1 jigger of dye, and 1/2 tsp of dishwashing liquid and dyed each group for 20 minutes. The instructions say to pre-wash your material and then make sure it is damp, so I did that for all materials.

I dyed each item individually and each took 10-30 minutes to do. So with that in mind, I prewashed all my materials and set up 4 mini pots on my stove.

Results from Dying Cordura

I am pleasantly surprised with how the warm tones turned out.

The Coyote has a yellowish tint to it so it makes sense that the warm colors would do so good.

What turned out to be happy accidents are the frost gray and Kentucky sky.

On a larger scale I’d add a little bit of peacock green to Kentucky Sky to make it more of a true olive.

Speaking of mods and mixes, sand stone is pretty great on its own but would add a little bit of chocolate brown to make it more Java. The purple and midnight navy turned out super dark so to lighten the purple I would use mostly super pink and add a little bit of purple. And don’t even mess with midnight navy, use sapphire blue instead to get a rich navy blue.

GORUCK Rucker Dye Color Chart

Ruck Dyeing Final Thoughts

I’ve used my dyed Rucker 3.0 for events (including a 20 miler, hella sweaty 2-3 hour workouts, Tennessee humidity and snow, and rainy Dallas evenings) and it is still as green as the day I dyed it.

But I also rinsed, soaked, and rinsed my bag over and over until the water was clear.

Lastly, of course your results may still vary from the ones I’ve gathered, but at least you’re not shooting in the dark.

Be sure to wear rubber gloves, to constantly “stir” your ruck, and to purchase Rit DyeMore not regular Rit (DyeMore is made for science fabrics).

Also NEVER EVER use bleach on your ruck. It will void your SCARS warranty.

Got questions for Shea? Hit her up on IG or her post on Reddit.