I began the process about 3 weeks ago, when the black walnut trees in my backyard began to drop their fruit. I gathered up all that had fallen, got out my big 5 gallon stainless steel pot, filled it with water and put in all the fruit, placed a lid on it and have slowly been adding new fruit as they fall. I expect to boil everything down in a few weeks. My wife made ink this way a number of years ago and I found her results to be beautiful, so this year is my turn.

Per the request from several people, here's a scan of the homemade ink produced by my wife several years ago, along with several others to use as a comparison:
Click to view attachment

The Noodler's Walnut is a completely different bird, as it has red pigment and is much darker. The Kiowa Pecan looks closest to the homemade ink in pigment, though the homemade stuff is not as saturated.

And this is after soaking the sheet for about 20 minutes in the sink:
Click to view attachment

Is this an ink you can use in fountain pens or just dip pens? What is the color like -- can you put up a scan?

Wow! Whodathunkit...

You should also be able to stun fish with it.

????? Do you stun them with your beautiful handwriting?

How much ink to you expect to get out of this 5 gallon pot?

you could have enough supply for a long time!!

Hey ! Would you consider sharing the recipe that you are using. I have a TON of black walnuts fermenting that I use for dye ....maybe I can use them for another use too !
Thanks !

As my father would have said...... Honor and glory to the braves..... Most interested on seeing the results....and even trying it!.

Yes indeed, keep us up to date with progress please!

I've used it in Sheaffer NoNonsense pens until I reduced it too much. Now it's too thick to use in a fountain pen. I hope to adjust the new batch better.

Since I need to boil it down a LOT to get it to ink saturation levels, I figure I'll be lucky to get 10 ounces out of it, though I may be pleasantly surprised.

No problem. There are a ton of walnut ink recipes out on the web - just Google "making walnut ink" like so: http://tinyurl.com/3ux8s4

That is extraordinarily cool. I'd love to see the results of your experiment.

Walnut dye is commonly used in hand papermaking as a dye. it doesn't hold up quite as well as some of the synthetic dyes, on the other hand it's the real thing, the color those other dyes are trying to emulate.

I also wanted to try this stuff few months ago but there were no wallnut trees around, then I made some "Coffee ink" but it's way too yellow, allmost like the Pelikan Brown, hehe!

Wow, that's great stuff. For the walnut ink that got reduced too much can't you just add more water now?

What I'm most surprised about is that the Golden Brown and Antietam held up to a 20 minute soak so well!

I love it!

Neil

Wait...thats a medium nib? Thats a huge line.

Nice color, by the way.

-Nkk

Yup - the brown lines are all with the same medium *italic* nib, while the red is broad italic and the blue is fine italic.