Originally Posted by
Pharmasweaves
So today was the first day working in the lab for my semester's project, and I decided I would try my hand at making an iron gall ink.
I'm using proportions from Sir Issac Newton's notes, and a procedure from The Booke of Sekrets.
Today was basically just crushing nuts (I'm using chestnuts that were growing in my back yard) and rusting the iron wire.
A few things I learned:
vinegar stinks, especially when the fume hood blowers are broken.
when using alchemy recipes from before chemistry and the ISO, remember that gr is not the same as g.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My procedure today went as follows:
Weigh 10 grams iron wire.
Place iron wire into 240 mL 4% acetic acid (white vinegar).
Place beaker on wire to submerge.
Using a mortar and pestle, crack chestnuts (carefully, as they are super spiny) and crush 58 grams of nuts. Add shells as needed to reach desired weight.
Try to stir chestnut remnants into 120 mL DI water.
Suddenly realize your weights were supposed to be in grains, not grams. (One grain is ~0.065 g)
Laugh at yourself.
Pick through chestnut remnants for nut meat, weigh ~8.3 grams chestnut meat.
Stir into 120 mL DI water.
Place beaker on top to submerge.
Leave until next week to soak.
Realize you forgot the gum arabic.
Do proper math to determine 8.3 g gum arabic is needed.
Try to stir gum arabic into the mess of iron wire, laughing because you only needed ~2 grams of iron wire.
Heat solution slightly while stirring to dissolve gum arabic.
Replace beaker to weigh iron wires down.
Leave until next week to rust.
Mark flow hood glass so that general chem students don't mess everything up.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My plan for next week is to mix another batch of chestnut solution, boil both of those for an hour to extract the tannins, then mix half of the rust solution into each and test color, saturation, feathering, ghosting/bleeding and water resistance a la SBRE Brown's Inkcyclopedias. For the papers, I'll be using Rhodia, Tomoe River, and Staples Copy Paper to compare. One set of writing samples will then be left in the windows to be exposed to sunlight, and a second set will be enclosed in a large mailing envelope in darkness.
The following week, I'll use the same inks to make a second writing and saturation test to see if the color has changed, and I'll be doing another water drip test to see if water resistance improves or is maintained with a week's worth of dry time.
I took a few pictures, if there's interest I can try to post those, and will try to update each week as I go, as well as maybe post a copy of my poster.
Bookmarks