A Little Sunday Chromatography

[tinysnail]

Today, I was telling my youngest sister about how I get a bright green halo when blotting Rohrer & Klingner's Alt-Goldgrün on tissue paper. It got me thinking about chromatography and how cool it would be to see what the dye components of that ink were... and here are the results!

 

Inks tested:

Diamine Amazing Amethyst

R&K Alt-Goldgrün

Parker Quink Black

 

http://38.media.tumblr.com/a574b1b1d9e5f9266ff441b543beacb7/tumblr_nb6wrwyGF61qgziczo1_1280.jpg

 

Setup (AA, Quink, Alt-GG)

 

http://38.media.tumblr.com/85641f3e2853d51b5c90d32c65e1bed5/tumblr_nb6wrwyGF61qgziczo3_1280.jpg

 

 

Results after about 15 minutes:

 

http://38.media.tumblr.com/5539f62787cf7f7dc001e933a646911a/tumblr_nb6wrwyGF61qgziczo2_1280.jpg

 

All I can say is: WOW!

 

Okay, just kidding, I can say some more.

 

I'm not surprised that Amazing Amethyst is made up of dusty pink and bright blue, since it IS a nice purple colour, but the actual separation of the components is quite pretty.

 

Quink Black was quite a surprise. It looks like the ink is actually a dark royal blue with some bright orange-yellow added; these colours are roughly complementary so: black! Wonderful. I actually really like that sunny yellow colour.

 

Alt-Goldgrün is what really blew me away. So many components! What a complex ink. I'm seeing a similar dusty pinky purple to what AA had, then a yellow-green, then a darker grassy green, then bright blue. It makes sense that such a mesmerizing ink has so much going on recipe-wise.

 

I'm hoping to do a bunch more chromatography today since it's so easy and fun and fascinating. I'll post anything else I do! Hope this was interesting to at least a few other people.

[kwzi]

Aware inkophill with basic equipment for chromatography is a great enemy of ink recipes!

in my eye Amazing Amethyst is made of bright blue and red.

Parker Black of violet and yellow-orange

RK Goldgrun consist of 3 dyes in which 2 are the same like AA, and there is one yellow.

 

Chromatography of ink looks nicer on silica, because towel "flatten" the color, and sometimes do not separate colors enough.

Howgh!

[WaskiSquirrel]

A few years ago, I started having my Chemistry class do paper chromatography with fountain pen ink instead of the recommended overhead projector marker ink. I need to remember to take some photographs of the results. I enjoy seeing it with the fountain pen ink. Last year, I inked up a bunch of Preppies as eyedroppers and some of the hardier pens in my own collection. I got some fun surprises. Chief among them this year was the Noodler's Mata Hari's Cordial has a green component.

 

I also saw the same thing with Parker Quink, though there was a wider variety of colors. Another black with a lot of colors was Pilot Iroshizuku Take-sumi.

 

http://squirrelscience.smugmug.com/2012-2013-Public/Local-Events/Crazy-Pen-Pix/i-ZTNTnRm/0/L/20130425_9999_24-L.jpg

[SujiCorp12345]

Cool. What exactly is chromatography (reveals which dyes were used in inks?) and how is it performed?

Edited August 31, 2014 by SujiCorp12345

[tinysnail]

Here is an update of the inks above, after another 15ish minutes:

 

http://33.media.tumblr.com/e1ba48929aa65b63f15f179841b33b22/tumblr_nb6ziokyk61qgziczo1_1280.jpg

 

I have way too much fun with this stuff, so 12 more inks are on their way to be chroma-tized!

 

 

Aware inkophill with basic equipment for chromatography is a great enemy of ink recipes!

in my eye Amazing Amethyst is made of bright blue and red.

Parker Black of violet and yellow-orange

RK Goldgrun consist of 3 dyes in which 2 are the same like AA, and there is one yellow.

 

Chromatography of ink looks nicer on silica, because towel "flatten" the color, and sometimes do not separate colors enough.

Howgh!

 

Haha! And thanks for your input, from what I've seen of your inks on here you definitely know what you're talking about. Looks like I really need to get some silica.

 

A few years ago, I started having my Chemistry class do paper chromatography with fountain pen ink instead of the recommended overhead projector marker ink. I need to remember to take some photographs of the results. I enjoy seeing it with the fountain pen ink. Last year, I inked up a bunch of Preppies as eyedroppers and some of the hardier pens in my own collection. I got some fun surprises. Chief among them this year was the Noodler's Mata Hari's Cordial has a green component.

 

I also saw the same thing with Parker Quink, though there was a wider variety of colors. Another black with a lot of colors was Pilot Iroshizuku Take-sumi.

 

That's such a great class project. I remember doing something like this on coffee filters using Crayola markers in grade 6 for our forensics unit. It's definitely more fun now Very cool! Definitely take more photos.

[tinysnail]

Cool. What exactly is chromatography (reveals which dyes were used in inks?) and how is it performed?

 

It's a process of separating inks/dyes into their components using some kind of solvent. Or, okay, as Wikipedia says, it is "the collective term for a set of laboratory techniques for the separation of mixtures." I'm doing a very basic kind of chromatography: strips of paper towel with big ol lines of ink, dipped in water so that the end of the strip is immersed but NOT the actual ink, then left to sit while the water travels up the paper towel and pulls apart the dye with it. I remember doing this in elementary school using coffee filters.

 

http://31.media.tumblr.com/6143a945db1a0d02a35e3e84799570ad/tumblr_nb70koBxWw1qgziczo1_1280.jpg

 

And these are the inks I'm doing now:

 

http://38.media.tumblr.com/14e260709b4fb0aee20f2dc150691092/tumblr_nb70koBxWw1qgziczo2_1280.jpg

[gwyneddd]

Chromatography is separating out mixtures using some kind of medium and a carrier--liquid or gas, generally. This is paper chromatography, using a solvent to move the ink's separate dyes up on paper, and they drop off based on various properties (charge, molecular weight.)

 

It's kind of like washing your driveway with a hose; the driveway is the medium and the water moves the debris on the driveway--the pebbles stay near you, the dirt washes up and the grass clippings move with the water and float away to the end.

[tinysnail]

Great explanation, gwyneddd! I like the analogy.

 

Here are those 12 other inks. I left the first 3 in for longer than the others, but it's no big deal.

 

1. J Herbin 1670 Rouge Hematite

2. Noodler's Black Swan in English Roses

3. Noodler's Apache Sunset

 

http://38.media.tumblr.com/6f4dd8f7c9b745ab017887f2876c09f2/tumblr_nb737jrKhC1qgziczo1_1280.jpg

 

4. Diamine Saddle Brown

5. Noodler's Squeteague

6. De Atrementis Violets

 

http://33.media.tumblr.com/65a1d6542a95d9e729adf81d7802bf5d/tumblr_nb737jrKhC1qgziczo2_1280.jpg

 

7. Diamine Coral

8. Noodler's 54th Massachusetts

9. Noodler's La Reine Mauve

 

http://38.media.tumblr.com/53395aa4c793f42dc57a65ed3ba92fb3/tumblr_nb737jrKhC1qgziczo3_1280.jpg

 

10. Diamine Chocolate Brown

11. Platinum Black Cartridge

12. Noodler's X-Feather

 

http://38.media.tumblr.com/e7b4f81091c4c09a6e5f3e31d0ab3878/tumblr_nb737jrKhC1qgziczo4_1280.jpg

[gwyneddd]

Great explanation, gwyneddd! I like the analogy.

 

 

 

 

 

Coffee filters, as was said earlier here, would be better than paper towels. Closer to the Whatman filter paper we used to use in the lab. (My area of expertise until I retired was chromatography--I started at age 16 and left off from it age 50-something. Now I relax doing stocks and bonds, much less smelly and dangerous.)

 

A good fluid phase is acetone (nail polish remover) and you can try isopropyl alcohol.

 

Many inks are several dyes mixed together and the chromatography separates them out.

[tinysnail]

That's really cool!

 

Hmm, I'll have to try this out with coffee filters too, then. Also other solvents, though acetone could get very smelly.

[gwyneddd]

Acetone is what we used in the lab. The problem is that nail polish remover isn't always acetone and it sometimes is mixed with something else.