Quoted:
Since acu (Okay ucp or whatever it's really called) is showing up cheap has anyone dyed or painted it? I have seen some photos of dyed RAID packs from back when they were practically giving away the acu ones. The end up looking kind of muddy when dyed with RIT brown, which is fine. Not sure what RIT would do to packs and pouches with padding. Is the the dye going to continually leach out of the padding? Spray painting seems like it would be easier but will it just crack and come off?
These are photos I pulled off edc by "zchen" The description says one is green and the other tan+brown
It is possible to dye a light colored object to a darker hue, nigh impossible to dye a dark colored item lighter.
You select the color you want to move towards, and set up a tall stock-pot with plenty of water. Heat it up to boiling, and add dye, stirring. Some folks add a couple of cups of salt, claiming it helps the dye to take better; likewise some add some rubbing alcohol.
With nylon, unlike cotton which always darkens when wet, what you see is what you get. Dunk the ACU item and let sit, pulling it out and reversing it while inspecting for right shade. Once you're there, yank it out and rinse off. If done right, and rinsed very thoroughly, the item will be permanently dyed with very little residual bleeding of color, if there is any at all.
Rit dark green seems to work pretty well; the rit brown seems to come out rather reddish. OK if you're invading Mars, I suppose, or if you are slithering through red Georgia clay a lot.
Some folks use camo Krylon paints to color-in their packs. The most successful technique seems to be several light mistings of the paint, applied one at a time, and allowed to dry.
There's a number of threads discussing this; I'll look around and post a link here. OK, found what I was looking for. The references––and links to other dyeing threads–– show up on pg4, but there are a LOT of recipies for dyeing in this thread:
http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=6&f=10&t=270564&page=4