All I could think the whole time was how is she not distracted by her cat:) I would have to pet it. As soon as my cats come to me and start the head bunting I give it immediately

I just bought a property with a huge oak tree. My brother suggested I make gall ink as the tree has loads of wasp galls. I also happen to be a chemistry teacher so I have some iron II sulfate. This will be an interesting experience!

A natural preservative to prevent the ink from moulding is a few drops of clove oil into the ink (it contains the powerful preservative eugenol) or 1 gram salicylic acid per 500 cc of prepared ink. I make my iron gall inks from pure tannic acid (which is very cheap to obtain sold by wine making suppliers) and ferrous sulphate (also very cheap available). Adding 1% concentrated hydrochloric acid to the ink will prevent the forming from the ferrogallotannate pigment in solution, so the ink remains limpid. Hydrochloric acid will evaporate away after writing leaving no harmfull acid onto the paper.

I just realized that if tannic acid is the active ingredient and a binder is needed, you could get both from most conifers! You can extract large amounts of tannin from the needles, and you can use the naturally sticky and thick sap of the trees as a binder rich in turpentine, something likely to deter pests and mold.

This was incredible, late in the 90's, at the primary school we made a black carbon ink, that was the cheapest possible ink in the 1880/1920 period, and that was not a french imported ink in that time, that were made from cephalopod ink, and that was mainly the ink used by the poor during this transition era from the Brazilian Empire to the First Brazilian Republic, before the brazilian industrialization, as well the "white paper" with lime(calcium oxide). If I still remember, the recipe was basically coconut oil/flaxseed oil/olive oil(ohhh my gosh, my surname came from the olive plant), black mineral coal and aloe vera "juice". For the paper, it was made from eucalyptus sawdust, vegetable glue, lime and water, then you pour this mixture trough a towel, what is left is basically a thick layer of "paper", that will be left drying in the sun, and after one day, you will get your hard, brittle and not malleable at all...spotted paper, that was supposed to be a white paper. And to be more "acurate to the date", you can use a pidgeon feather as a pen, but in the 90's, this animal in Sao Paulo was portrayed as a vector of respiratory diseases, so the teacher managed to get a few duck feathers from a toy called "peteca". I don't know how KZfaq got me here, but I loved to remember my childhood in the school, and remember how we were addited to the "Beakman's World" TV show, the Barsa encyclopaedia and the beginning of the Internet on Debian 2.0 computers with 56k faxmodem internet.

One thought on the acidity of the ink relative to the eventual deterioration of the document. The ancients wrote on calf vellum or parchment before paper. Those products (cringe ... cringe) were probably neutral or basic using urine or other processes which may in most cases neutralized the acids since many ancient manuscripts illuminated or otherwise still exist. Love your style and am envious, being a lefty. Found your site when searching for the ancient production of gold leaf which I observed in Bangkok circa 1968 (technique detailed in my current novel). Your site fell in between the leaf you tubes. My antagonist is trying to slide a fragment sheet of the the Thai founded gold leaf using the palimpsest method.

your cat is so affectionate, it's adorable. (the lil paw at 5:50. awwww) Found your channel through the Welsh Viking btw !

I love the way it darkens. If I remember right it does this because as it dries it oxidizes causing that dark shade to appear.

The production quality is simply outstanding. The persistence and attention to detail. You make the medieval life enticing, where inks feel like potions, where greys magically alchemize to black in front of our eyes. So cool.

Growing up in California, the local Oaks were just covered with what we kids called "Oak balls". They were everywhere and they were jet black on the outside. And dark reddish brown inside. We used to use them for BB gun targets.

Outstanding! Thank you.

By the way I LOVE the old recipe that you found and that you used it to make ink. Brilliant!

I love to learn about these chemical processes in many areas and marvel at how brilliant people were to find elements to produce what they needed and wanted! My new fave channel!

You can also get the tannic acid from acorns as well. They are the nuts growing on an oak tree. Filter the mixture through a coffee filter and it will lower the number of times needed to clean it. The vinegar reacts with the tannic acid making it even darker. What about going in with your room mate and also sell the ceramic inkwells?

The turning black for the ink was so cool.

Absolutely amazing and stunning!

Oh no! You're stirring up my obssession with medieval era.. of course I love this..

Oh wow! That was such an amazing video! I’m so glad KZfaq brought me here! Lovely video made with such care! I so want to try it out now!

Thank you for displaying this video! I made Isaac Newton's recipe for iron gall ink and was worried it was too thin. Now I know it is probably correct for the time. Isaac Newton did include using alcohol (strong beer or wine) instead of water to reduce mold, since your bags molded a little. Thank you again so much!!!

Warning for people that want to try honey as binder: Just use around 2 tiny drops of honey. It is used in paint and it creates what watercolours make so flouting. Use in combination with Arabic gum (with much water or it will dry in seconds after mixing it with the pigment. If you do like me, take the Arabic gum stones and use much water and when mixing the paint, use many drops. But around 1 drop honey per 3 Arabic gum.

A great way of demonstrating the whole process, just loved the video, and how the ink finally, miraculously becomes darker on writing!

I want that book...this video has been super informative.

Im so late to this but this was amazing to watch and at the end seeing it change from gray to black was so magical! I can't wait until you get more batches going I definitely need one!

Omgg I just found your channel and wow I'd love to try this on my own as well. Also your calligraphy writing is so beautiful. I hope your product sells well. 💕💕

I have only in the last couple of days discovered your KZfaq channel and I am hooked. Your videos are wonderful; you're wonderfully charming as well. I really enjoy the time you take to explain things, both historically and in terms of technique. Now I have to ween myself away from simply watching and get about the business of doing. Keep up your work.

So interesting. I didn't think I would like watching you write at the end but that was cool too! It does change to super black right before your eyes. Thank you for putting the time into this project so that we all can enjoy what you have discovered!

BRAVO !

This is so cool! Also, your cat is so cute

This was a fun video to watch.

Very inspiring to watch:-) I'm crazy about drawing with ink and pen! I wish I could order it from you, but I am very far, the shipping would be too expensive.. I used to live in childhood where were many oaks:-) it's one of my most favourite trees and there were those galls of course, I didn't know what exactly they were then.. so it's also very nostalgic and close to my heart

I tried blue vitriol or copper sulfate because I wanted to make something to stain wood with, but it turned out a rather pale brown. Not really bad but not what I was looking for. It looks better on paper than on wood. I didn't ferment my galls though, I just simmered them for an hour. But I know it works because it made an ok black ink when mixed with iron. I also tried mixing that gall extract with common lye or potassium carbonate I got from wood ashes and it turns a beautiful fiery brown and thickens the liquid quite a bit, but unfortunately it seems to be quite soluble in water afterwards. I found it very entertaining to put a layer of gall soup on the wood and let it dry and then to paint lines with lye on it. It felt magical. Next time I hope to try it with saltpetre.

This was so much fun to watch from beginning to end ! I sent you a DM on IG ~

Great vid! Thank you! Sharing to my foraging group on fb. I found a lot of what I thought to be galls on an ancient oak tree locally (England). It could be 1000 years old! However, the "galls" aren't round! They're kind of lumpy and strange looking! I might try making ink from them but I am *not* using my spice pestle and mortar! lol

They use Calcium Phytate to halt iron gall ink corrosion. I wonder if you can add it to the ink to stop it before it even starts? Just a thought.

I just started using India ink and love the idea of making my own. Also, excellent cat. 10/10.

Very well researched and informative. I would love to see videos of your process for making other colored inks like blue! I just saw that you made red, so I'm going to head over and watch that one now!

Thank you!

Thank you for sharing this recipe I have just got my hands on some oak galls and would like to give this a try, what was the amount of oak galls to the 12oz of water please?

You can make iron sulfate by putting iron filings in a solution of copper sulfate. The iron displaces the copper, so elemental copper precipitates out, and the solution turns green as the iron joins the sulfate. Copper sulfate can be purchased easily as root killer at hardware stores.

Encontrei por acaso seu canal e adorei! Esse vídeo é muito útil!!! Parabéns e obrigado por compartilhar. Uma pena não conseguir essa árvore aqui no Brasil... Vou pesquisar se há frutos similares...

Just for your information; Galnuts grow when the wasp lays an egg in a leaf, there are other insects who do the same with other trees, but the galwasp makes the biggest domes. 🙂

I had *just* clicked subscribe when the tuxedo cat hopped into frame. I feel my tuxedo cat would also hop into frame if I were to film something. Great channel! I’m interested in inks gif ink washes in art but also because I decipher old German handwriting and write it to practice and expand my ability to read. Can reliably read back to 18th century, which is very fun to write. I can’t do official fancy calligraphy with flourishes, but I love cursive / Current.

Fantastic 👍. A few months ago I was looking at ink recipes in a 19th century book, but decided not to have a go and make any.

A possible trick to help with the acidity would be to test the acidity with a litmus strip, and adding some baking soda to lower the acidity. Granted it's not entirely period, but it also won't hurt the ink, and will help with archival quality

That should get interesting!

Try more! More colours! Love it

I'm so excited! I found my first handful of oak galls yesterday and I'm waiting for them to dry out so I can use them. I was wondering if it is possible to add salt to the finished ink to keep it from going bad or molding. I don't know how great salt is for paper though.

I might try this later when I use an inking brush with it for drawing.

This is awesome. I know your future batches will only improve! Could you perhaps boil the rain water before soaking to reduce the chance of mold?

Considering the main thing that makes acorns unpalatable is the tannins, perhaps you could bypass the galls by boiling acorns instead and reducing the liquid down to strength? It would take a lot more acorns, but they're generally much more easily accessible in most areas. Also, rainwater today is nowhere near as clean as rainwater historically would have been. Distilled water is probably closer to an accurate representation of the historical element of the recipe.

Iron(II) sulfate comes in various states of hydration. Iron Sulfate is blueish green in its heptahydrate state (iron(II) sulfate heptahydrate), it is only white in its Anhydrous state(Anhydrous iron(II) sulfate).Copper sulfate is also white when it's Anhydrous.

Awesome.

Medieval chemists used to make solutions of copper sulfate and then introduce iron pieces into it. A displacement reaction occurs causing metallic copper to cement on the iron, which in turn, goes into solution forming ferrous sulfate or "Copperas" This why it's called that way.

If the acidity is too much of an issue you could try neutralising it by mixing a base in the ink (like sodium bicarbonate/baking soda, or caustic soda, which is a very strong base and should be used with proper safety measures in place, like glasses and gloves). I don't know how that maight affect the texture or how well it works/darkens, but since most of the chemical reactions you need for it to work should have already happened it shouldn't really affect it much. To figure out how much base you should add, you can use a ph testing strip. If you're adding a liquid base I suggest concentrating the ink a bit more (letting more water evaporate) so that the final volume is the same as it would have been without any tampering. You ideally want it to be at a neutral ph since bases also have corrosive properties. Aim for a ph7 (perfect neutral) or just as close as you can get. Remember you can always add to a solution but never take away. Idk if this would work, so try this on a small sample at first and observe the results for a few days after you've done it.

Very interesting information, thanks.

Whether in current times or medieval, urban water would likely have other undetermined elements in it that would alter the chemistry, hence the colour and quality of the dye, that's why the rain water.

If you buffer it with alkali to reduce the acidity will the colour disappear?

I know I came here to find out about oak gall ink, but I love your jumper! Beautiful

damn, so i just finally found out today what wasp galls are (saw them many times on oak trees without knowing what they are) which got me to the whole medieval ink from gall tanin story which got me here to this gorgeous woman explaining how to do the ink plus some pretty caligraphy

That looks like a kombucha mother but with color. I wonder if you would be able to produce the acid by saving the "mother" (it's a colony), putting it into sugary water and waiting a week again.

Could I ask you to do a tiny follow up video - to see if the writing made with the ink (around 28:30) has oxidised/darkened even further?

Thanks for the video. I have a question. Can this recipe be dangerous for hair ? Let me explain: this method of producing iron gall ink is close to a natural straightening treatement and dyeing created in tunisia and morroco. Indeed, women there use it to relax their hair in a natural way. Actually i’ve never tried it because if you don’t know exactly how to do it, you can experience breakage and more. I wanted to try the recipe but with some changes so that it isn’t risky. The recipe consist of burning galls with olive oil in a stove until it turned black. You reduced the gall in powder. You do the same with cloves. You need to have natural henna in powder, arabic gum, salt, vinegar. You can add any other powder that are good for hair. You also need ferrous sulfate. However, I wanted to change it for iron oxide that seems safer to me. Anyway, there is just need to be a chemical reaction between the « tanin » from the galls and any substance with iron, according to my research. Now, you take a pan, water and add galls. It must cook over low heat. You can after a moment add the iron ( In my case iron oxide but the traditionnal method use ferrous sulfate). Little by little, you add the other ingredients. The end must be reserved to salt and when you turn of the heat you add vinegar. You let it cool and only after you can apply it to your hair like henna. Be careful, it stains ! After 24hours, you rinse it thoroughly. According to some people, your hair will be dyed in a beautiful color black the first time you use it but for the straightening effect, you will feel it the 3d time. The real question is how the straightening effect can be explained ? The chemical reaction that happened is it dangerous ? However if I use iron oxyde, wouldn’t be less risky ? What do you think please ? Thanks for the people who will take their time to read that. I’m sorry if it’s not clear enought but i’m not fluent in english.

I’ve noticed that you can get tannins inexpensively, (if you’re not married to the idea of manufacturing the ink purely from scratch), from a brewmasters shop. Any place that has winemaking supplies. I believe they derive it from grape skins.

cant stop looking at your cat 😆 what an adorable.

I think if you dissolved some baking soda in some warm water, which is more basic, you could rinse, or soak, the nibs to minimize the damage. Other than that, great job and a fantastic result. Thank you for posting this.

Actually I believe it's egg yolk that you add to pigment to create egg tempera which has been used for many many hundreds of years, usually to paint on walls and this has lasted to this day. If you want to you can also make something called "Glair" from the egg white, which can be used as a glaze. But don't let any egg white get into the egg tempera - you pass the egg yolk from hand to hand to remove any wet egg white from the egg sac. Then you pierce the yolk sac and allow the contents to drain out. Then throw the empty sac away.

Your hair is gorgeous, you MINOAN girl, you :)

22:33 Those documents lasting way longer may be due to the paper they have used for them. Maybe the paper in those was premade with salt-infused pulp so that the ph balances out and the acid doesn't corrode the document over time.

Came for the ink, stayed for the cat

Well, the honey doesn't sound like a bad idea as a binder, it got anti-bacterial and -fungal properties as well, if I remember right. And many artists that make their own watercolours use clove oil for that same reason as well, maybe that would work for inks, too.

Do you post to Australia? We don’t have many Oak trees handy.

Someone told me it was the iron content and mineral content in the water too apparently, but to be honest theres a thing called zero water which removes it but i guess if you want to follow exactly how the recipe would call this is how you go about it.

You should try filtering the nuts with a coffee filter. It will give you a cleaner result.

I love the old world techniques, nice channel & unique niche, we should all become more "hyperaware" of the weather & the earths ways, you obviously have an old soul, love it❣

Perhaps the documents that did not survive were a different type of paper. In watercolor, for longevity, you choose acid-free paper . Alkaline paper (according to Google) can last a thousand yeats.

I wanted to ask, will natural inks go moldy on the page after use in writing, like they do in the bottle? I would also assume steeped in vinegar first to disolve it, I wouldn't know but maybe they didn't have their gum arabic in such fine dust. Brilliant videos!

What is the name of this book please. I've gathered loads of oak galls from trees where i live

Good job. You should experiment. Leave the jars in the sun, add more gum arabic, boil it a little longer. You can get some surprising differences. I hope modern archival paper with withstand iron gall ink over the centuries, but I'm not sure I can wait five hundred years to be positive. I do love using it, just don't anyone make the mistake of using it n a fountain pen. You can buy already cut feather quills from several places online, and they're incredibly cheap. Not all are historically accurate, but they still work. Well, they are more or less historically accurate, but there's more than one way to prepare a feather, aand each way produces a very, very different writing expericence, and are used for different types of writing. For some reason, all the feather quills I've found online produce an extremely stiff nib, usually with a wide stub on it. This is fine, but greatly limits some of the ways a quill can be used. You can make up for this by using feathers from different birds, such as a crow, or even a blackbird. I read about one made from a sparrow, which sounds nearly impossible, and for me it was. I have made blackbird and crow quills, and of course goose, turkey, and even duck feather quills. I once saw a quill made from a swan feather, but no chance I'm going to do that. The temptation for me is to use historically correct paper, and I do sometimes do this. I've also written articles and stories by firelight, tallow light, candlelight, and kerosene lamp light on this paper. Right now I'm on a river reed and papyrus streak, and probably will be for a couple more months. I can write my name in hieroglyphics, but that's as far as I've gotten. I hope to be able to write a letter in a couple of months, and from memory. No fair looking up the anything I don't know. I did cheat and write my wife a love letter on Valentine's Day. I wonder how many women received a love letter with hieroglyphics and a papyrus scroll? Could have been very many. I would think.

There are tons of oak galls here but ours looks different. Guess different oak species produce different colored galls.

This ink is acidic and etches into the paper. This poses a challenge for preserving the manuscripts over hundreds of years. This is also known to corrode metallic nibs. Make sure you wash the nibs after use in clean distilled water. This ink will stain your hands and cause a bit of irritation. So, wear your gloves and protective goggles, please. To prevent moulds, please add a little bit of alcohol. Any alcohol would do, but bit of cheap red wine will lend colour too.

I wonder how this mixture will affect your nibs. Important to wash nib after use i guess..

How many inch yard ink it make?

Love the cat

Specialty nibs from either john neal,books usa or scribblers uk

What book is that? I want to buy a copy

Is there any less acitic and easy to home made ink for practice ?

I can recommend a cheap Malbec as a red wine base if you want. Malbecs tend to be very dark so that property lends itself as an ink base…😅😂

Thanks. Guitar necks next

is this fountain pen safe?

This shouldn’t do any damage to glass pens correct?

I wondered what was in ink, I made a quill pen - actual goose feather, and civil war era hob mail shoes,,hmmm maybe a next project

Why didn't you just brew black tea for tannic acid?

If you put some alcohol instead of vinegar that would make it even more shelf stable and less acidic

Copper sulphate is the most amazing turquoise blue, so you’re right

Can you use the green hulls of walnut? They stain black

I wonder whether you can see it with tea infusion. Lots of tannin in tea

You should make and sell it love to buy some

This ink, was commonly made from iron sulphite, the Fe++ salt, whose formula is FeSO3, while sulphate is the Fe+++ salt that is FeSO4. The reaction that makes the ink dark is the transformation of Fe2+ to Fe3+ in the ink and that leaves free sulphates The thing is, sulphates (SO4 - - -) and sulphites(SO3 - -) tend to make new acid from moist drawn from the air and keep on etching (eating) the paper in very humid environments. This not a problem on vellum but it can be on late XVIII and later paper. You can replace the iron sulphite for Ferrous chloride which you can buy or make by soaking fine iron whool in household Hydrochloric acid. The name copperace probably comes from the fact that, because Fe++ salts are green in colour, it was thought it had copper in those days.

I did not get gall nuts so I used inknuts

Have you considered making authentic bistre ink?