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Calling Chemists - What Ingredient is Causing My Homemade Iron Ink to Refuse to Dry?


RememberThePorter

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Hi There,

 

This is my first post and I made the account to ask this question.

 

This is my homemade ink which I call "Iron Tea: An Englishman's Home", born of experimenting at making a waterproof and lightfast ink using only things that might be found in any English home:

page.thumb.jpg.bec9122cbbac0afaab977040c4d69976.jpg

 

I am very please with the colour. It goes on very light and binds to the paper in a much darker shade of brown. There is a lot of variation in the shading and feels very 'homely'.

 

fresh.thumb.jpg.d20578098f20f639f4ee302257edd0ed.jpg

 

But I have discovered a problem with it. It won't dry. At least, not after 36 hours... which I can only think is a chemical problem as I would expect even the wettest of inks poured onto the page direct from the bottle to dry before then. Specifically, the ink won't dry on anything except cheap newspaper like materials. The images here are from a Clairefontaine notebook.

 

To say it won't dry may not be accurate however, rather, it feels 'tacky' or 'sticky', much like you might expect a thin layer of tree sap to feel like. It is smudgeable, which I discovered by accident like so:

 

smudge1.thumb.jpg.f2769f7301545046a7f51fef7b900a90.jpg

smudge2.thumb.jpg.9ee7b8df2edb2cc236d2e14ee917efee.jpg

 

My question is, what could be causing this. I can safely eliminate contaminated tools/materials as I have tried on a few and hold myself in the proudest rank of 'clean freaks'. So it may be that something I have put in it is causing it to take forever to dry. The ingredients are as follows:

 

- 10ml apple cidar vinegar steeped nails for few days

- 10ml balsamic wine vinegar

- 200ml tea (made from boiling down 500ml of tap water with 5 ordinary black tea bags)

- 10ml port (for preservation and fun of course (red wine would work just as well I suppose))

- 10ml "100% pure honey"

 

None of these ingredients were measured beyond lazy precision and may be off by a bit. Filtered through a coffee filter before writing.

 

If I had been forward thinking I would have made more iron sulphate solution so that I could just make more and experiment with taking things in and out to see if there are any changes, but since I didn't I figured I'd ask here. I will have to wait a few days before trying again.

 

I have read historical examples which include honey and wine, so my insinct that they are the problem doesn't sit right. Perhaps the apple cidar vinegar? but I can't see why. Is there some chemical in any of the above which which would cause this? Is it just 'honey' doesn't dry ever and will sit on the Clairefontaine paper forever until moved, whereas it would have been absorbed by more historical writing surfaces? I know tea on it's own will dry very fast as I have used that before. Should I have got rain or distilled water, is there some chemical in tap water (chlorine) which causes it to stick and stay wet forever?

 

Is there something natural I can add to it to assist the drying? Should I dilute it?

 

Is there some overlooked process which obviously prevents this exact problem which I haven't seen before? I have done some research and cannot find anything really. Most search engine results are a maze of 'why is the ink drying in my fountain pen' or 'how to make my fountain pen dryer'. *sigh*.

 

Any experience people have making their own inks with any of the above ingredients is much appreciated.

 

(on the plus side, on the cheap stuff it is waterproof and doesn't move a jot even when run under the tap so something must be right there at least).

 

A few closing notes:

 

- Fear not the nature of the ink. I know it is more acidic than a Soviet rainstorm in 1986 and will bore holes in the Nostromo faster than you can say "Jonesy". Don't worry about it - I have been using iron gall inks almost exclusively for over a decade and am well aware of how overblown their danger is on the internet.

- Shouldn't I have used pure green Fe (II) sulphate? No because that was not the point of the experiment.

- Shouldn't I have used gum arabic instead of honey? No because that was not the point of the experiment.

- Won't honey cause it to rot and attract mould etc? Maybe but I don't mind as it is literally cheaper than chips these days and I don't mind if my entire batch of ink or what I write with it catches fire.

- What about iron galls, they have much better tannin content and less bad things in it than tea, shouldn't you have used them instead of tea, No because that was not the point of the experiment.

 

This was made for fun and is going to be imperfect - don't worry about it :).

 

Help, ideas and inspirations all appreciated! Thank you all!

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  • RememberThePorter

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I mainly wanted to say the color is lovely and I am looking forward to the responses. This is probably the best first post I have ever seen. :thumbup:

 

Unfortunately, I lack the knowledge to help. I think the natural thing to try would be to identify what ingredient is acting as a humectant and reduce the quantity of it but I have no idea what ingredient that is.

 

Unrelated questions & comments:

Which of your ingredients, if any, act as a surfactant? I guess the basalmic is good as a biocide. (?) I am surprised that there seems to be no color added by the grapes in the port. Is the color going more grey as it ages on the paper? And an all-important question: what does it smell like (noting all the aromatic ingredients!)? 

My pens for sale: https://www.facebook.com/jaiyen.pens  

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Spontaneously, I'd say that the honey is the culprit here.

 

Quote: (https://www.winsornewton.com/int/articles/art-history/winsor-newton-and-the-golden-age-of-watercolour-1750-1850/)

... watercolour painting was made easier when colourman William Reeves introduced re-usable watercolour cakes in 1781. By adding honey to the formula, the paint became re-wettable as honey is hydrophilic, attracting water and never fully drying.

 

Also, your recipe is much too complicated. More info here:

https://www.cecilia-letteringart.com/algonet/algonet/algonet/inkrecip.htm

... and here:

https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/about/libraries/our-work/conservation/persian-recipes/black-inks

https://kimanisamk.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/diy-india-ink/

 

Have fun!
Claes in Luind, Sweden

 

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11 minutes ago, Claes said:

Spontaneously, I'd say that the honey is the culprit here.

That would be my guess.  And it, port, and maybe apple cider vinegar might contribute to the sticky feel.

 

1 hour ago, RememberThePorter said:

"100% pure honey"

Note that in the US, at least, unless the sole ingredient is "raw honey", it might include more than honey (apparently, "honey" as the only ingredient may or may not actually be "raw honey"). :rolleyes:  Heaven forbid they just be honest and charge a fair price, even if it's necessarily more...

 

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1 hour ago, PithyProlix said:

I mainly wanted to say the color is lovely and I am looking forward to the responses. This is probably the best first post I have ever seen. :thumbup:

 

Unrelated questions & comments:

Which of your ingredients, if any, act as a surfactant? I guess the basalmic is good as a biocide. (?) I am surprised that there seems to be no color added by the grapes in the port. Is the color going more grey as it ages on the paper? And an all-important question: what does it smell like (noting all the aromatic ingredients!)? 

Thank you! As far as biocide goes, my lame intuition also thought that's what the balsamic + high alcohol level in the port would be good for. As far as the colour goes, my camera is rubbish, but It does have a lot of variation. See this picture which I hope captures it more accurately.oldestsample.thumb.jpg.0c79db2e401878bf9e979844c3d7cc45.jpg

 

^ This is about two days old and the oldest sample I have so it may all tend towards one colour over time. There is the light brown on the 'wor' going to a neutral grey in the 'gs'. The 'put him' has a purple tinge to it and the 'some' is almost pure grey. It really is delightful in person (if I may say so myself) but I suspect it will end up all one colour with shading over time.

 

The smell was quite bad in the beginning, but it seems to be getting better and better over time, the vinegar smell is being over taken by the port and now it smells like 'grapes on the verge' might be the best way to describe it. It smell's very 'wet' - which isn't helpful at all I know. Strong, not unpleasent but not beautiful and fruity.

 

Just looking at that picture i think i can see in the 'gs' that it still looks like a wet sliver up the middle of it - scared to touch it to test!

 

58 minutes ago, Claes said:

Spontaneously, I'd say that the honey is the culprit here.

... By adding honey to the formula, the paint became re-wettable as honey is hydrophilic, attracting water and never fully drying.

Well would you look at that, I hadn't seen that before - thank you! It looks like that should be the problem. I wonder what home ingredient could replace it - or perhaps I should just play with the ratios.

 

Also thank you for the recipie articles - as far as 'complicated' goes it was never the goal to make it as minimal as possible. I like to think of myself as a 'bombast' in the kitchen and there was little prenotion of much of the ingredients before seeing the bottle infront of me xD. 

 

44 minutes ago, LizEF said:

Note that in the US, at least, unless the sole ingredient is "raw honey", it might include more than honey (apparently, "honey" as the only ingredient may or may not actually be "raw honey"). :rolleyes:  Heaven forbid they just be honest and charge a fair price, even if it's necessarily more...

 

I am in England, and my jar doesn't say 'raw' on it, but here it may not need to - I'm not sure. I am fairly confident in it's purity though based on it's consistency and how I recognise honey to be from experience.

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46 minutes ago, RememberThePorter said:

I am in England, and my jar doesn't say 'raw' on it, but here it may not need to - I'm not sure. I am fairly confident in it's purity though based on it's consistency and how I recognise honey to be from experience.

:thumbup:

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I would have suspected the honey and the port. I think the extra sugar in port (IIUC) and the honey may be in such high concentrations that you're essentially getting a syrup that strongly resists drying. 

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I have some more nails steeping and will leave it for a few days and remake without the honey (or some with much less, and some with none) - I'll post the results here when they come in. Fingers crossed!

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Dialog from a horror movie....

 

1 hour ago, RememberThePorter said:

I have some more nails steeping...

 

:lticaptd:

 

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26 minutes ago, PithyProlix said:

Nail juice. It's good for the gall bladder.

:lol:

 

19 minutes ago, Claes said:

Me [innocently]: where you keep the gall nuts?

:lticaptd: (Innocently, my eye!)

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Here we have the 2.0, made as above, but with 4 variations, all sans honey and three with a different additive. Each sample was 50ml.

inktests.thumb.jpg.2bb75cd368f7e5568cd608bf01c42225.jpg

 

The first is exactly as the original recipe listed above, but without the honey. It drys as quickly as expected and is perfectly usable, if a little thin. Surprisingly it was not too thin to use and a sentence can easily be written with it between dips on a thin nib, I wonder if the port has some light binding agent added to it (but it doesn't say so on the bottle).

 

The second is with 2 drops of ordinary green washing up liquid. It made all the ink fall onto the page with all haste as the surface tension was (as I expected) obliterated. The same nib was used for this sample as the others.

 

The third added 2 'dashes' of baking powder. It caused the ink to bubble quite a bit while some reaction was happening, and the final product is one which is a little darker than the pure application, there was no discernible difference in feel however.

 

The final was with 2 drops of PVA glue, which pleasantly acted to darken the application and slightly sharpen the lines.

 

My personal preference is for the first example as I like the greater freedom the ink has when settling into its natural line, especially since enough can be held onto my nib of choice. This freedom can be seen, I think, in the flatter shading curve of the same. 

 

All in all, I am very pleased with the outcome which yields a waterproof, fast drying, dark and free flowing ink by the litre for less than the cost of a Sunday paper (assuming one has the ingredients already in the kitchen).

 

In case anyone is interested, the nib used for these samples is the following:

telephonepen.thumb.jpg.41b22314454b1077607251b95d068a8e.jpg

Edited by RememberThePorter
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Baking powder and PVA glue are definitely not things I would have considered adding to ink.  :D. Thanks for sharing your experiment! 

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47 minutes ago, LizEF said:

Baking powder and PVA glue are definitely not things I would have considered adding to ink.  :D. Thanks for sharing your experiment! 

 

Yeah, PVA glue can act as a binding agent in paint (https://material-properties.org/polyvinyl-acetate-pvac/), it's water soluble and in many cases PH neutral - I figured it would make a fine thickener and it worked quite well. It allowed for quite a bit more ink to adhere to the nib. As a plus, it is easily cleanable with acetone (just like shellac in india inks) so even if it gummed up a nib (which in such low qty I can't think it would do too much anyway).

 

PVA isn't really in keeping with the point of the ink however since I don't think it's something most homes would have - at that point, may as well just add the thousands of years tried and true gum arabic.

 

The baking powder was mainly an experiment at neutralising the natural acidity of gallic acid inks. I don't know exactly how much would be needed to sufficiently counteract it (if anyone knows let me know - otherwise I'll have pull out some old chemistry books!).

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Real honey won't dry out and won't readily dilute. It is a good germicide, but it isn't going to dry. I am not a chemist, but that is my experience (though not in ink). Remove the honey and see if that makes a difference. If it doesn't, remove another ingredient, and so on. However, I'm betting things will immediately improve with the removal of the honey. 

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