Scientiffic composition of Inks...

[professionaldilettante]

I was wondering, is there a way to create your own custom inks or modify commercial inks by adding components to it that would increase/decrease certain characteristics? Such as, changing the viscosity, the lubricative properties, and other characteristics? If we know what went into a ink, couldn't we just add a little more of it, or modify it to suit our needs? The only argument I can think of is that because of the variety of inks out there, there isn't a need for such tinkering with inks. What components of ink determine what characteristic the ink will have?

[eilu]

distilled water will affect viscosity, color density and opacity.

adding different colors will change the hues.

If you want to play around with the component dyes, try a bit of home-based chromatography*. Take a long strip of paper, put a dot of ink near one edge and suspend it (e.g., tape the other end on a wall) with just the dotted edge touching some clean water. Over time (I left mine for a day or two) the capillary action of the paper fibers will carry the water up, and the water will carry the dyes up, separating them. 'Lighter' dyes will travel further (lighter in the sense of particle weight, not hue).

It's very interesting to watch- Parker Quink black separates to blue and brown; the brown traveled further than the blue.

As for things like scent, lubrication and permanency, these are 'bells and whistles' that are manufacturer's trade secrets. If you have access to a mass spectrometer...

 

 

*will not work on waterproof or bulletproof inks, unless you take the trouble to find proper chromatography film and solvents.

[professionaldilettante]

I was thinking of a mass spec... time to bust into a university lab, or butter up a researcher...>.<

[yttl]

Some reading around past FPN forums that touch on this subject reveal that detergent acts as a surfactant, decreasing the viscosity of the ink and resulting in a quicker flow. I found this out when cleaning my pen with detergent and not bothering to flush through it well enough... I'd also inadvertantly contaminated a whole bottle of ink after I'd rinsed it with detergent!

 

So... Use it wisely

 

As for saturation, theoretically if you evaporated off some of the water from the ink, this would increase the concentration of the pigment in the solution, also known as... saturation! The only thing is I'm not quite sure what that will do to the ink itself; it may decompose due to the heat. I may try it with a bottle of Quink...

 

The rest has been said above: mix with other colours for more interesting hues. Just make sure that the pHs of the inks are compatible. This will avoid the risk of precipitates forming when you start mixing. There is usually no problem

Edited December 16, 2009 by yttl

[Paddler]

distilled water will affect viscosity, color density and opacity.

adding different colors will change the hues.

If you want to play around with the component dyes, try a bit of home-based chromatography*. Take a long strip of paper, put a dot of ink near one edge and suspend it (e.g., tape the other end on a wall) with just the dotted edge touching some clean water. Over time (I left mine for a day or two) the capillary action of the paper fibers will carry the water up, and the water will carry the dyes up, separating them. 'Lighter' dyes will travel further (lighter in the sense of particle weight, not hue).

It's very interesting to watch- Parker Quink black separates to blue and brown; the brown traveled further than the blue.

As for things like scent, lubrication and permanency, these are 'bells and whistles' that are manufacturer's trade secrets. If you have access to a mass spectrometer...

 

 

*will not work on waterproof or bulletproof inks, unless you take the trouble to find proper chromatography film and solvents.

 

If you use a 15 cm strip of blotter paper or filter paper (coffee filter) it only takes a half hour or so.

 

Paddler

[AD356]

Like you I have been intrigued by this as well. There are many different things you can do to ink to change them.

 

To change the viscosity Gum Arabic is used to thicken up ink/paint more than anything else. It works great but can cost a great deal too. Gum Tragacanth, is also used, as are glues, mostly natural animal hide glues. Again this is a costly effort. Dextrin is also used to thicken up ink and can be made at home. Dextrin can be made from cornstarch, to do this baked for ~2 hours at high temps(~400) like said above detergent will work, but care should be taken to read the label for other ingredients.

 

There are many MANY things to add or change the color of your inks. It may sound silly but the easiest way to change the color is to use other inks. Inks from the same maker as a rule mix well. Other than that you can use food and clothing dyes.

 

There is a wide arrange of pigments used to make paints, most of these will work as well. While most are natural you can find manmade pigments that cost less. Most will come in powder form and can be added to inks or used to make your own. *NOTE* some are quite toxic!

 

There are also chemicals that will change the color. Iron Gall ink is a black ink made from tannins and is acidic there is a lot of information about this type of ink on the web. Other colors: Cochineal for Red, Logwood(pigment) for Purple, Sodium Ferrocyanide mixed with Ferric Ammonium Sulphate for Blue, lastly for Green Mix Nickel Ammonium Sulphate, Sodium Ferrocyanide, and Ferric Ammonium Sulphate. Some of these may be toxic and some of the inks may be acidic. It is also important to point out that commercial inks may have other chemicals that may cause undesired reactions.

 

Carbon is the easiest and quickest way darken any ink or for making a black ink. Carbon can be found in a few different types. Bone Black or Ivory Black, is made from burning animal bones. Ink sticks get their black from either vegetable or Pine soot. Lastly and maybe the best is Lampblack. This is super fine carbon is attained from the burning oil or candles. Lampblack can be made at home, and can be found cheap online. The carbon is very fine and is held firmly within the pores of paper making it very dark and waterproof (to some degree).

 

I hope this has helped out and good luck with your own inks.

[MYU]

Moving to Inky Thoughts...

[Everette]

This conversation is really interesting, and I'm learning a lot that I didn't know before, so I hope nobody minds if I pose a question.

 

The above reading covers how to change some of the individual properties of a manufactured ink, but how would you go about making an ink at home. Not iron gall ink, mind you, but somthing simmilar to what is commercially avaliable for fountain pens.

 

While it would probably be easier and cheaper to just buy ink, I think it would be interesting to learn about the process and experience it firsthand, and information on the web seems to be limited.

 

~Shane

[professionaldilettante]

What ingredients are responsible for the lubricative properties of an ink? It would be interesting to figure that one out too, but i suppose that that would come with a more viscous ink?

[JohnCruzNg]

There is a post with some pages from a 1960s book which includes how to make inks. Just have to look for it.

[AD356]

All ink recipes that I know (which is not many) call for water as the main ingredient. Just like Evil Genius said “distilled water will affect viscosity, color density and opacity”.

 

Paint recipes can vary greatly from oil, to alcohol, milk to vinegar. There are two big problems with paint recipes though; first drying time.

 

Oil Based need along time to dry. Oil does not evaporate, but instead there is a chemical reaction that takes place and dries the paint. While there are agents that can be added to oil paint to speed up this drying time, they can cause other problems like…

 

Flow. Paint can have many things in them that make flow a problem for fountain pens. These can include: Gum, Glue, Egg, Crystals, and other insolvable items. Some of these will clog up a pen, others will “set” or dry too fast in your pen and nib. Still others will be harmful for pens and/or nibs.

 

You can of course use any base you wish but unless you plan on spending a lot of time, and destroying a few pens, use water as your base.

 

For a recipe that is not Gall ink. All you really need is Lampblack, and water. Here is a recipe for an ink provided in the 1960's book Johncruzng is talking about. Use one table spoon of Sodium Silicate (per cup of water), and add as much Lampblack as you dare, two table spoons should be good (Too much and it could clog your pen). If you make a lot of this, or want to keep it from clogging add a few drops of Methyl salicylate (Oil of Wintergreen).

 

Have fun

[Sholom]

The contrast between this thread and all the ones worrying about ink pH and safety for pens is fascinating. Many of the suggestions for ink modification are OK for dip pens, but I would never put inks using them into a fountain pen. Pigments don't belong in fountain pen inks unless you have access to the equipment and chemicals necessary to ensure that they are finely ground (fine enough to be well under 1/10 the width of the finest channel in the feed mechanism) and fully dispersed (particles have a natural tendency to clump together unless there is a countervailing repulsive force present, which can be achieved with various ways of modifying the surface of the particles). Lampblack is probably fine enough but must be free of incomplete combustion products and is difficult to fully disperse and be kept that way (no clumping in the pen). Gums like arabic (used in watercolors) and tragacanth (used to bind pastels) are prone to spoilage and can lead to clogging if the ink starts to try in the pen. Sodium silicate is extremely basic - the recipe given (1 Tbs./cup) probably has a pH at or above 13, heading towards Draino territory and capable of damaging many plastics, brass and aluminum, as well as destroying your pen if the ink even partially dries in it. I could go on, but the point is that not all ink is fountain pen safe, and most ink formulas in the open literature are not fountain pen safe.

 

Modifying an existing ink is always fraught with peril, since you have no idea what is already in it and how your additive(s) might interact with that. More often than not, there is some interaction between ink components even if they don't actually react with each other. As an example, a 3:1 mixture of Noodler's Green Marine and Private Reserve DC Supershow Blue makes a very pretty color, but the permanent black component of the Green Marine deposits itself on the wall of a glass mixing vessel as a smooth film that defied removal in a fully equipped chem lab with an assortment of common and exotic solvents, acids, and surfactants. I've had this mixture in a Pilot 78G for over 1 1/2 years without incident, but permanent damage would almost certainly have been done if I had simply mixed the inks and filled the pen without waiting to see what would happen in the mixing vessel.

 

Here are some simple and usually (but no guarantees) safe modification you can make to MOST fountain pen inks (things like some of the Noodlers, iron gall inks, and particle-containing inks like the carbon and nanoparticle inks are much touchier than simple dye solutions):

 

1. adding distilled or deionized water will lighten color and increase surface tension, making the ink less prone to feather but more likely to bead up on certain papers and be dry in the pen. Certain dyes and pigments may precipitate out if too much water is added.

 

2. adding a surfactant (for our purposes a detergent or soap) will lower surface tension, making the ink wetter (which may improve lubrication) but more prone to feather on some papers, cause nib creep, and in the worst case making the ink come pouring out of the pen when you pick it up. The wrong surfactant (depending on what is already in the ink) could cause the ink components to completely gum up or precipitate out).

 

3. humectants (glycerol, propylene glycol, glucose) will slow drying, give the ink more "open" time (how long it takes for the pen to stop writing when held in the air with the cap off), and may be more lubricating (but that depends on what else is in the ink) and/or provide higher viscosity (which may also affect the perception of lubrication). In the worst case, the ink may take days or weeks to become smudge-proof (like some PR and Noodler's colors) and dye may start precipitating out.

 

4. alcohols (methyl, ethyl, isopropyl) will increase drying speed but probably will also increase feathering and may cause staining or dye precipitation.

 

So, in short, amounts are critical, many potential components are incompatible, dyes are not pigments and not all dyes and surfactants are compatible with each other. Published ink formulas are often ancient and unsafe for fountain pens vintage or modern. Commercial inks also contain carefully selected preservatives (for example, methyl salicylate smells nice and isn't very toxic but will attack many plastics and is not to my knowledge used in any current commercial inks except perhaps in trace amounts for its scent), dispersing agents, wetting agents, defoamers, co-solvents, and corrosion inhibitors.

 

Not that you can't modify inks safely at home, but be very careful about their behavior and stability before you fill your pen with them, and expect many of your experiments to fail or at least not be an improvement over the ink you start with. When I made my own inks from scratch, I found it very helpful to have a fully equipped chem lab at my disposal, along with my experience formulating water-based coatings and working with dyes and surfactants. Now that I don't have lab access, I buy my inks and occasionally do a bit of ink mixing. Proceed with caution and patience, and don't think that there is a readily available additive that will "fix" your favorite color. Do experiment, but be very observant. Good luck.

[AD356]

Thank you so much Sholom for expanding on this topic and pointing out how the recipe I described above could be harmful to Fountain Pen and their Nibs. Like I said before I have been very intrigued by ink and making/mixing Inks. Here are some resources that I have found helpful and I hope you all like them as well.

 

Old Ink recipes(most of them is the dreaded IRON GALL INK)

http://www.djmcadam.com/ink-recipe.html

http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/ink/make_ink_recipes.html

 

Ink and paint info

http://www.mmwindowtoart.com/painting/basics1.html

http://www.jacquiblackman.co.uk/pen_and_ink.htm

 

Paint recipes and supplies(I do not endorse any of these site... blah blah not responsible blah blah)

http://naturalpigments.com/education/article.asp?ArticleID=116

http://www.sinopia.com/recipes.aspx

[professionaldilettante]

An interesting idea has finally been formulated in my mind, after a month or so of on and off playing with the idea: Ink Kits.

 

At first, I toyed with the idea of what if companies supplied ink in colors that were pure, meaning that they were composed of only one pigment or dye? Thus would open up the opportunity for people to adjust, mix, and recombine to their hearts content.

One problem I realized with this is that the resulting ink would be of only one intensity, and that different characteristics would be needed by different pens.

Now, what if, a colorless base was used, that would contain the surfactants and antimicrobial agents and other colorless goodies? The colors would then be provided in "pure" concentrates. Powders could be used, but the chances that that would result in a mess would be much higher. All the solutions that were to be mixed, would be buffered to a neutral pH, and all colors under the rainbow could then be formulated. By making sure that the components were compatible, this would eliminated the problems caused by incompatible inks.

 

This is only an idea, and while I do not have the means to put this in actions, maybe if this was placed out into the community it would have a chance at flourishing. However, where ever this idea goes, all I ask is to give credit where it is due.

Cheers,

-pd

[tfwall]

An interesting idea has finally been formulated in my mind, after a month or so of on and off playing with the idea: Ink Kits.

 

At first, I toyed with the idea of what if companies supplied ink in colors that were pure, meaning that they were composed of only one pigment or dye? Thus would open up the opportunity for people to adjust, mix, and recombine to their hearts content.

One problem I realized with this is that the resulting ink would be of only one intensity, and that different characteristics would be needed by different pens.

Now, what if, a colorless base was used, that would contain the surfactants and antimicrobial agents and other colorless goodies? The colors would then be provided in "pure" concentrates. Powders could be used, but the chances that that would result in a mess would be much higher. All the solutions that were to be mixed, would be buffered to a neutral pH, and all colors under the rainbow could then be formulated. By making sure that the components were compatible, this would eliminated the problems caused by incompatible inks.

 

This is only an idea, and while I do not have the means to put this in actions, maybe if this was placed out into the community it would have a chance at flourishing. However, where ever this idea goes, all I ask is to give credit where it is due.

Cheers,

-pd

 

 

Been tried, failed.

 

Check out this thread and perhaps this moribund website.

 

 

[I am not a number]

Putting butter in ink does not necessarily make the pen write "butter smooth".

 

But you can write delicious toastcards and send them to yourself at work to enjoy as a lovely mid-morning snack!

[Possum Hill]

Putting butter in ink does not necessarily make the pen write "butter smooth".

 

But you can write delicious toastcards and send them to yourself at work to enjoy as a lovely mid-morning snack!

Marmite, however, is classed as a "high maintenance" additive and should be used only by people willing to invest the extra time in pen cleaning.