Making iron gall ink from oak galls

https://nyanpasu64.gitlab.io/blog/iron-gall-ink/

by LorenDB • 2 years ago

93 38 2 years ago

nyanpasu64.gitlab.io

h2odragon2• 2 years ago

Information Technology used to be squishier.

imagine doing this when there was little notion of things like "pH" and "temperature control was literally a matter of feel.

13of40• 2 years ago

I once had the romantic idea of making beer from a 200 year old recipe. Didn't get too far with it, but I recall one of the pieces of advice being not to let your horse stop walking while it's stomping the grain from the chaff, because it will urinate and ruin your ingredients. Also no mention of yeast - I guess you just took it on faith that fermentation would start if you kept it wet and warm.

h2odragon2• 2 years ago

I guess the horse maintained the yeast cultures

tastyfreeze• 2 years ago

If you are using whole grains there is already natural yeast on it. Yeast is also pretty much everywhere. Nutrient rich solution left open will ferment. It just might not be a super powered brewing yeast.

Scandinavian brewers had a "magic stick" used to capture and store yeast until the next batch.

rags2riches• 2 years ago

Brewing, like baking, was a regular occurrence in a household. It was done in the same place, with the same equipment, as last time. The yeast culture from the previous batch was likely a given ingredient.

squircle• 2 years ago

I think you can do something similar with black walnut shells/fruit (which is also good for fungal skin infections.)

pavel_lishin• 2 years ago

I brought some home, intending to do this - and the squirrels got into them, heavily staining the deck.

Which is a good sign I guess!

DFHippie• 2 years ago

I believe with black walnuts the juglone, which isn't present in oak galls, is responsible for much of the color. You should be careful with juglone. It can cause skin irritation. Apparently people do make ink from it.

Turing_Machine• 2 years ago

I believe that juglone functions as a natural herbicide, reducing the competition from other trees.

Maybe it also has activity against fungi?

mauvehaus• 2 years ago

You can. You can also buy the active bits pre-extracted and ready to dissolve in water to use as a stain as Van Dyke crystals:

https://bolgers.co.uk/products/bolgers-walnut-crystals

No affiliation on that, they just happened to have a decent description of the product.

NegativeLatency• 2 years ago

Iron is a powerful electron donor, in wooden ships (commonly made with oak components) this same phenomenon is called "nail sick" or "iron sickness" and is why brass and bronze are preferred to iron/steel/stainless steel hardware and fasteners.

It will also do this to wood on the outside of your house if it comes into contact with moisture. The wood looks burned around old nails, because the process is similar to what happens when the wood is actually on fire.

I've been repairing the old growth wood trim on my house from the 1930's and dutchman-ing the destroyed bits around fasteners with salvaged wood of a similar age.

nyanpasu642• 2 years ago

I looked up electron donors in Wikipedia and apparently those serve as reducing agents. I was confused how it would oxidize wood, so I looked up 'iron-catalyzed oxidation' and found an article (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00351367) which claims oxidizing iron produces free radicals and hydrogen peroxide which subsequently eats the wood. I also came across https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrous in my research....chemistry is complicated.

austinjp• 2 years ago

OIL RIG: oxidation is loss, reduction is gain (of electrons). So an electron donor would seem to facilitate reduction.

My chemistry-fu is very weak, though, so take with a pinch of NaCl.

nmeofthestate• 2 years ago

For the same reason, if you use steel wool on oak it'll ruin it, as tiny pieces of the steel embed in the wood and react with it resulting in lots of small black spots.

joshu• 2 years ago

look up fenton's reagent: iron(ii) will catalyze water into hydrogen peroxide. this also causes iron gall ink to damage paper over time

Loughla2• 2 years ago

Huge trigger warning ahead: suicidal things.

I made oak gall ink once. My plan was to turn my own pen blank, make my own paper, and make my own ink.

To then write my suicide note before I did it. It seemed, I don't know, poetic?

The process of making the ink was so interesting that I got into making natural dyes and things. It sort of distracted me long enough to stop the suicidal thoughts.

Now I make tie dye shirts as a hobby when I feel dark!

corinroyal3• 2 years ago

I love that your suicide note gave you a reason to live. I make inks, paints, and dyes as part of insuring that sobriety is more satisfying than drinking beer.

noufalibrahim• 2 years ago

I don't drink but as someone who does calligraphy as a hobby, I can attest to the calming effect that the smell of inks and paper, the sound of a nib scratching, the slightly embossed letters on paper after writing etc. have on ones state of mind. It's very relaxing and the outputs are very rewarding. Doubly so if you're in tech. This is almost the complete opposite.

appplication• 2 years ago

Any advice for someone with a family member who is willing to go to rehab but continues to relapse over and over? He is an exceptionally smart guy, but he’s lost his fitness, job, hobbies, relationships and purpose.

maxbond• 2 years ago

That's beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Clarifying question; did you take a pen and make it blank, or did you turn a pen blank on a lathe? I gather it's the second, since the project was to have everything hand made.

Loughla2• 2 years ago

Yeah so I never know how to say that without going into too much detail. I turned it from a blank into a pen.

wincy• 2 years ago

Bizarre that I literally heard about this for the first time yesterday, as it’s mentioned in the excellent game Pentiment, which is about a scriptorium in a 16th century monastery (which is more interesting than it sounds!)

Thanks for sharing.

corinroyal3• 2 years ago

I see a lot of people recreating iron gall inks lately. There are many sellers on Etsy. It seems unwise to resurrect a corrosive ink that has eaten away so many manuscripts.

Walnut husk ink is a gorgeous and easy alternative. I get mine at S.F. Herbs by the pound, soak for at least a day or ferment in distilled water, and boil down until it's as dark as I like. Some borax or sodium benzoate can keep the surface from molding.

sevensor• 2 years ago

There are modern iron gall inks with better properties. E.g. Rohrer and Klingner Salix. Older inks had insanely low pH.

pacaro• 2 years ago

FWIW iron gall ink is still made and used in the present day. To be legally married in the UK you have to sign the marriage registry with iron gall ink. It's sold as "Registrar's Ink"

NullInvictus• 2 years ago

Notably Diamine’s Registrar Ink and Rohrer & Klingner’s Eisen-Gallus-Tinte inks are relatively easy brands of iron gall ink to acquire and the modern formulas are less harsh and useable in fountain pens.

They’re nice in that they’re naturally waterproof inks. They’re a bit on the dry side though in terms of flow.

Lammy• 2 years ago

I learned about this stuff from the Mark Hofmann forgeries + murders on Forensic Files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hofmann

EpiMath• 2 years ago

I'm not very sure about the vinegar + steal wool part... that makes ferrous acetate pretty quickly, and what we want here is a ferro-gallate. I think there are ways of producing ferro-gallate inks without using sulfates, but historically ferrous sulfate was commonly used ( and leads to paper being eaten away over time )

nyanpasu642• 2 years ago

That was just a quick experiment (not fully grounded in chemistry theory) to see what would happen, since my ferrous sulfate wasn't arriving until a day later.

enriquto• 2 years ago

Newton made his own iron gall ink according to a recipe found in his notes [0]. By using the same recipe you can sort of feel a connection to him...

Also, think about it when you hesitate to "reinvent the wheel" or "perform some work below my pay grade". The man actually fabricated his own ink for writing! If Sir Isaac himself could set aside time for this mundane part of his work, you certainly can. (Also, he polished his own lenses, an extremely arduous process; although there were many people in England at the time who were more skilled than him in glass polishing. He found that the very nature of polishing glass inspired him thoughts about the physics of light [1, chapter 1].)

[0] https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/225712-a-reci...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QED:_The_Strange_Theory_of_Lig...

jart• 2 years ago

That's like saying inventing TeX was mundane and beneath Donald Knuth, or that Dennis Ritchie shouldn't have spent so much time typing his thesis. The one thing all the greats have in common is a fanatical obsession with the presentation of their ideas. If you think it's beneath you, then that's because you haven't considered how important it is.

ggm• 2 years ago

I've handled victorian era letters (Letters to or from John Ruskin) and the way they decay around the ink is amazing. It's like picking up a post-modern paper cutout with goth black edging: the insides of the writing just .. went.

(this was decades ago, as a child, before archival concerns were brought to the fore. Don't handle old letters)

ajot• 2 years ago

It seems you can get oak gall powder if you're not up to the task of foraging and crushing the galls yourself

https://simplifier.neocities.org/irongall

petalmind• 2 years ago

You may also be interested in Joumana Medlej's book "Wild Inks & Paints": https://majnouna.gumroad.com/l/wildinks?layout=profile.

"this handbook introduces you to the wonder of transforming natural matter into fully developed art supplies. Learn the basic chemistry behind colours and prepare inks, lakes, paints, pastes, binders, media and drawing tools from plants and materials foraged as the seasons turn, or already present in your kitchen cupboard."

staplung• 2 years ago

Here's a video which goes through the entire process of making some. She goes pretty far into the historical accuracy by e.g. using rain water.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo9rbRRCBv8

It's on the long side but it's at least worth jumping to the end to see how the ink goes on as not at all black but quickly dries to jet.

Making iron gall ink from oak galls

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