Category: Blitherings

Gum Arabic – The Last Ingredient

Today is the final day for adding ingredients to the iron gall ink.  I added 25g. of gum arabic to the ferrous gallate (new name for the oak gall / ferrous sulfate heptahydrate solution) to create the final product of ink. Until the gum arabic is added, the solution is really just a solution or a liquid. My gum arabic was in a powdered form, so I simply placed it on top of the liquid in the jar, and shook it a lot. Since adding it, I am continuing to shake it. The gum arabic to the left is in its most common form – hardened sap. It has a jewel-like quality, I think – a lot like amber – and besides using it in ink, it is edible and has many uses in the food industry.

Gum arabic, the hardened sap of the acacia tree, is used a binder in ink, controlling the ink’s viscosity – how the ink flows.  It adds more control into the ink’s behavior, such as eliminating or lessening feathering, bleeding or cracking when use on paper or parchment. An element of luminosity or shine is another characteristic it imparts to ink.

In addition to controlling viscosity, gum arabic helps the ink to adhere to the paper. The water in the ink evaporates, and left behind is the colored portion of the ink; it is the gum arabic which acts as a glue to stick the ink’s pigment to the paper.

An ink – or watercolor paint or gouache – needs the gum arabic to give it the right consistency or body to flow easily, but not messily, from the pen or brush. Other pigmented inks may also crack, and the addition of the gum arabic helps prevent this; I don’t believe that iron gall inks suffer from cracking.

Soon enough, the ink and quill will be put to the test of actually using it!  Stay tuned . . .

 

Chemistry Magick & A Quill Scraper

Early this morning, Josh and I went to the hardware store.  We bought supplies for Thursday’s indigo dyeing adventure and a piece of steel wire to make a quill scraper, a tool used to scrape out the membranes inside the feather’s quill, which is where it attaches to the bird.  Once home, Josh headed out to the garage, and within about 45 minutes produced a scraper, similar to the one found in yesterday’s quill cutting video with Mr. Ruud.  All told, it measures about 8″ in length and is a dandy little item.

Quill scraper made with a piece of steel wire, inserted into a wooden handle. End shaped and bent. Total length is about 8 inches / 40 cm. Works very well!

And then, a bit of housework – dusting! It’s gotta be done – a bit of lunch, a nap, and onto the magic of adding Ferrous Sulfate Heptahydrate to my slightly fermented jar of oak galls.

Ferrous Sulfate Heptahydrate was not hard to find.  I bought it from Amazon and had it within a day or so.  The jar is about 113 g. – I need 50 g. for the ink.  Thus, I weighed it out.

Bottle of chemical magick!
50 g. weighed out.

From here, it was time to add it to the oak gall mix, which has been out in the sometimes-sun since Saturday. I shook is multiple times everyday.

Settled oak galls in water (80 g. galls to 300 g. water).
The view from above . . .

And now – oh, this was so exciting and beautiful! – the addition of the Ferrous Sulfate Heptahydrate to the oak gall mixture!

Ferrous Sulfate Heptahydrate as it settled into the oak gall and water mixture. So lovely!

And now, shaken up, the dark ink of the Iron Gall Ink!

Shaken mixture of Ferrous Sulfate Heptahydrate and Oak Galls!

And now, another 24 hours out in the sometimes-sun. Stay tuned for the addition of Gum Arabic (25 g) tomorrow!

The First Quill

While we wait for the ink to ferment, along with kimchi (more later!) and the current batch of beer, I have taken some quills to begin to re-learn how to cut them.  What an adventure it has already proven to be.

To begin with, I bought a quarter pound of white turkey feathers from a local feather company.  They are white, and what I was able to do was to look at the diameter and width of the quill part – not the feathers, as they are not important – but the thickness and length of the lower end of the feather, the part to create the nib of a quill pen.

Yesterday, I stuck the quills in a glass of water to soak overnight.  I made sure there was enough water to cover the lower end of the quill up to where the first barbs begin.  One feather had its tip intact, but the remaining four had been cut away or removed.  According to varying sites, the end should be cut away prior to soaking.  After soaking the quills, I attempted to do the following, in this order:

  • Scrape out the membrane within the quill.  I used a variety of things, some of which were more satisfactory than others – in particular, I used a couple of threading hooks for my spinning wheels.  They weren’t especially good.  Nor was a bent paper clip or seam ripper.  I have seen scraping tools fashioned out of bicycle spokes and mounted in a handle – I will try to devise one over the next few days.  The soak in the water gave the feathers a rather fowl (yes, deliberate pun!) smell – light and rather disgusting.  Perhaps they soaked too long.  The next round of quills, I will try to remove the membrane without soaking them overnight, and then move into heating them, as in Step 2 below.
Scissors for cutting; tools for scraping out the inner membrane.
Feathers ready for membrane removal. Note that only one does not have its tip removed.
All feathers with tips trimmed to remove membrane from shaft of feather.
  • After scraping out the membranes – none really seem to become clear as suggested by varying videos on YouTube – I hardened the quills in hot sand.  I put some fine sand into a sauce pan on the stove and heated it up.  I heard you can spit on the sand (or sprinkle some water drops if you are disinclined to spit) and if you hear a hiss, the sand is hot enough to harden the quills.  I measured the temperature of mine, aiming for 350 F, and ended up with a bit more.  From there, I moved the pot onto a trivet on the patio, and inserted sand into the quill tips and left each quill to clarify (what it is supposed to do) for about a minute.  I cycled through the quills.  At times I could hear the quills hissing in the sand – water evaporating or the sound of scorching from touching the bottom of the pan?  Three quills were scorched, and two were not.
Hot sand!
Hardening / clarifying feather shafts.
Scorched and distorted!
  • After the hardening / clarifying process I looked at my quills.  They looked kind of sad and did not smell delightful.  After choosing a scorched quill, I watched this video by Dennis Ruud, a master quill cutter. 
  • While I did not follow all his steps, I did attempt to create a quill as he did – with some success.  My first quill was not at all clarified, nor was it especially good.  Still, the process of learning was most important.  The fact the quill was rather scorched and deformed meant I had to cut off a lot of the area that would become the nib.  Wah!  Still, I made the attempt – and was really rather pleased with the result.  I used different Xacto blades for the final product.
  • Finally, I stripped away all the feathers using slices from the Xacto knife as well as trimming them with scissors.  Ultimately, all I was left with was the shaft and a nib, total length about 8 inches / 20 cm.

  • And then I practiced writing . . .

The quill nib was broader than I would have preferred, but the pen held up well despite all the flaws.  The paper itself is very smooth, and having a hard finish, not especially absorbent.  As a result of both the hard finish on the paper and the broad nib, it took a bit of time for the ink to dry.  I tried script and printing using the quill turned to about 35-45 degrees to create a thick-thin element.  Still, for my very first quill in ages and ages, I was pretty darned pleased with it!

 

Oak Gall Ink: Day 1

Yesterday’s post was about oak gall ink (which I may also refer to as “iron gall ink”), how it is made, some historical information, and what not.  Today I will tell you about what I did, accompanied by my fine photography!

The Receipt:  Take 80 g. oak galls, pulverize into fine powder, and dissolve in 300 ml. of distilled water.  Place into jar, seal, and set out in the sun for 3 days.

300 ml. distilled water
80 g. oak galls

I weighed out 300 ml. water on my digital scale, followed by 80 g. of oak galls – which came to exactly 3 ounces!  I put the galls into my non-used coffee mill, but the outside was so tough I took them out, placed them in a baggy, and took a 3 lb. hammer to them – well, Josh did the first honors of crushing the galls, and I immortalized him.

Oak galls in pint Ball jar.
3 lb. hammer to mete out crushing.
Pulverizing the oak galls.
The galls broke easily with the big hammer!

After the crushing in the baggy, the galls were placed in the coffee mill a second time and were pulverized into a powder.

Pulverized galls in coffee grinder.
Finely ground oak galls!

Thence, they were transferred to a pint Ball jar, water added and powdered stirred in.  I placed a thin layer of plastic wrap between the lid and contents, shook it up a bit, and took it outside to enjoy the benefits of the sun for the next three days.

80 g. powdered oak galls in pint jar.
300 ml. water and oak galls in pint jar.
Mmmmm! Can’t wait to drink this!
Plastic wrap to prevent any possibility of reaction between oak gall – water mixture and metal lid.
Labelled and working on its tan(nin)!

Shaking will occur daily, as thought about, and on the 25th the ferrous sulfate heptahydrate will be added.  Who knows if that step will work at all!

Note:  To see the pictures larger, click on one in each group to work through a slide show.

Oak Gall Ink: What To Do

 

If you were to google “oak gall ink” a bazillion links turn up.  Videos, message boards, recipes, historical documents are revealed to the unwary.  In particular, there are two ways in which oak gall ink – also known as “iron gall ink” – may be made.  One involves the simple crushing of oak galls and then steeping them in water (distilled is probably the best choice as  there are no chemicals to interact with the galls), and the other is a 2-month long ferment which gets (eww, gross) all moldy.  I’m not sure the latter is up to my tastes, but I will give it a shot nonetheless. Today, though, is the “short version” – perhaps a process lasting a week or less.

There are two sites which I think give a good indication as to the process I plan to use.  The first is this video from the British Library:

This next link is from the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, out of the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.  I rather like the description, the detail, the grey kitty Chloe, and the historical evidence of a cat with inky paws on a manuscript.  Both are good reads, so take the time to travel a bit.

Receipt for Iron Gall / Oak Gall Ink

  • Oak galls:  80 g.
  • Distilled water:  300 g.
  • Ferrous Sulfate:  50 g.
  • Gum Arabic:  25 g.

Crush oak galls into small pieces or grind into powder using a spice or coffee mill.  Place into jar and cover with 300 ml. of distilled water.  Place in sunny window 3-7 days (depending on your life and schedule).  I plan to do 3 as per the recipe from the Schoenberg Institute.  After 3 days, there should be a dark murky liquid in the jar.

On Day 3, add 50 g. of Ferrous Sulfate to oak gall mixture; replace in sunny windows for another day.  On Day 4 add the Gum Arabic and leave for another day.  On Day 5, strain the liquid into a clean vessel and voila, ink!

Thoughts and Concerns

My first concern is I am using ferrous sulfate heptahydrate, which is apparently a hydrated form of ferrous sulfate that dissolves more readily in water than the normal.  My next concern is the ratio of oak galls to ferrous sulfate – it is 8:5, or much closer than the 5:1 and 3:1 ratios I have seen in other recipes.  The more acidic the ink, the more destructive to pen nibs, quills, and paper.  However, at this point, I’ll take it as the ferrous sulfate heptahydrate may not create such a strong acid.