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Making dip-pen ink with shellac?


Aelfattrum

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I recently acquired some walnut ink crystals from Paper & Ink Arts. This makes a very beautiful ink (not entirely dissimilar to J. Herbin's Cacao du Brésil, but browner overall), which seems pretty smear resistant when dry, but is not at all waterproof.  I've added a bit of gum arabic, which I think improves the behaviour for the dip pen, but also seems to do nothing for waterproofing. (Iron Gall inks obviously might have more waterproofing, but I don't really want to use these with a dip pen, I don't think.)

 

Thinking about "India inks", some of which have water-resistance, I was wondering about mixing shellac into the walnut ink. I see recipes for carbon black ink with shellac, but I haven't seen any for walnut-based inks. I don't see any reason why this shouldn't work though. Does anyone have any experience doing something like this?

 

(I see a variety of shellac flakes are available, from very light-coloured "Platina" to "Blonde" to "Orange" to "Garnet"; I don't know if for the amount of shellac that one would add to an ink the colour of the flakes would make much difference. At least one of the ink recipes I saw for carbon-black ink called for pulverising the flakes, I suppose this is better than dissolving in alcohol when thinking about use on a dip pen?)

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