What Is The Simplest (Nice-Looking) Fp Ink I Can Make Without Special Equipment?

[Chouffleur]

If there are two axes for ink recipes, easy-to-difficult and invisible-to-bold, I'm looking for a sweet spot. I know from spy novels that I can use lemon juice as invisible ink. Well, I don't *know* it as I haven't tried it but let's pretend that's true. So that's the left side of the graph next to water. Water also scores well at the bottom of the "easy" Y-axis on up to whatever the trickiest multi-ingredient, lots of retorts-and-finicky-processes-commercial ink at the top.

 

I'd like to make an ink that's easy and visible to the naked eye. It doesn't need to be an attractive color but there are a few constraints:

• It must be visible to the naked eye after it's dried on paper - extra credit - the darker or prettier the better
• It must be usable in a fountain pen (don't worry - a Pilot Metropolitan) without causing damage or a lifetime of cleanup
• It must not involve any equipment or chemicals not found in your grandmother's kitchen (if she was a bad cook, your *other* grandmother or an aunt)
• It must not produce such a large mess or smell that it requires being single, being married to a saint, or living on a mountaintop with a prevailing wind blowing away from civilization

In other words, I'm looking for the ink-making equivalent of replacing a sac on an Estie.

 

All this is part of my quest to become the Renaissance Newbie. A person who has mastered the take-the-Swiss-army-knife-out-of-your-pants-pocket level of accomplishment across a broad range of disciplines.

 

Thanks for your suggestions.

Edited June 29, 2015 by Chouffleur

[lectraplayer]

The simplest I can think of is plain ol' McCormick food coloring. I've been using it for a couple years now.

 

I am also working on a polk-berry "formula" if you can call it that...

 

Iodine also works, however "Pilot Metropolitan" is an important key word.

[Flaxmoore]

I've made pretty fine ink from reducing down Mrs Stewart's bluing solution. It's Prussian blue, straight from the bottle it's a pale blue. Concentrated down from 8oz to 1 ounce by simple boiling, two drops of glycerin, and it's a rich deep blue that is quite permanent. It's working fine in a jinhao x450, haven't tried in anything better yet.