To make Walnut 'Ink'
First find a pot you don't mind staining. The ink can stain so strongly that the pot will not ever look clean again.
Using that pot as a gauge, figure out how many pieces of the walnut hulls you can easily get into it while leaving about 3cms clear at the top.
Fill up with hot water, and bring the pot slowly up to a simmer (put a lid on it ! the mess stains the cooker too )
Leave the pot gently simmering for a good hour, and then turn off the heat and let it sit to cool down. Leave the hulls in the water for at least 12 hours, but I managed to be busy enough that I put the pot outside and it sat for three days and it worked fine. It's a no rush kind of ink making.
Strain the liquid into a clean jar (there's a knack to this. If you use a sieve then that'll get stained too, and it won't remove all the fine gritty pieces of hull, but if you can find a bit of cloth, like an old t-shirt and line the jar with that then you can pour the liquid off into the jar, like draining spuds, and the cloth will catch the fine debris. Mind and wear gloves, otherwise your hands will be stained too.)
At this stage, the ink can be used with a brush, and it makes rather good sepia type watercolours, but it's not a lot of use with a pen.
Take a little gum arabic, and dissolve it in a very little amount of hot water, use the original already stained pot. Add some of the inky liquid and stir. It'll thicken up slowly, but if you add a little heat to it, it'll happen more quickly. Mind that if you increase the temperature of a reaction by 10degrees, you cut the time of the reaction in half. It works with ink making
You can increase the potency of the ink by adding either a little iron water (crush an iron tablet in half a litre of hot water) or using a little copper water (put some small offcuts of copper central heating pipe into vinegar, and it'll turn a beautiful turquoise blue or add the copper to ammonia and it'll give a beautiful rich inkblue) but, and it's a pay attention but, if your iron is too strong, it will eventually eat it's way through the paper you write on, and the copper liquid is toxic. Do not ingest or dispose of without a lot of forethought.
Either way, the metals will make the already dark walnut ink into a rich black colour.......that stains so completely that it ruins clothing and leaves skin so stained that it takes an awful long while to remove, basically until you lose that top layer of skin.
It's a very good stain for wood though, which can be hard to obtain from most natural dyes.
M
First find a pot you don't mind staining. The ink can stain so strongly that the pot will not ever look clean again.
Using that pot as a gauge, figure out how many pieces of the walnut hulls you can easily get into it while leaving about 3cms clear at the top.
Fill up with hot water, and bring the pot slowly up to a simmer (put a lid on it ! the mess stains the cooker too )
Leave the pot gently simmering for a good hour, and then turn off the heat and let it sit to cool down. Leave the hulls in the water for at least 12 hours, but I managed to be busy enough that I put the pot outside and it sat for three days and it worked fine. It's a no rush kind of ink making.
Strain the liquid into a clean jar (there's a knack to this. If you use a sieve then that'll get stained too, and it won't remove all the fine gritty pieces of hull, but if you can find a bit of cloth, like an old t-shirt and line the jar with that then you can pour the liquid off into the jar, like draining spuds, and the cloth will catch the fine debris. Mind and wear gloves, otherwise your hands will be stained too.)
At this stage, the ink can be used with a brush, and it makes rather good sepia type watercolours, but it's not a lot of use with a pen.
Take a little gum arabic, and dissolve it in a very little amount of hot water, use the original already stained pot. Add some of the inky liquid and stir. It'll thicken up slowly, but if you add a little heat to it, it'll happen more quickly. Mind that if you increase the temperature of a reaction by 10degrees, you cut the time of the reaction in half. It works with ink making
You can increase the potency of the ink by adding either a little iron water (crush an iron tablet in half a litre of hot water) or using a little copper water (put some small offcuts of copper central heating pipe into vinegar, and it'll turn a beautiful turquoise blue or add the copper to ammonia and it'll give a beautiful rich inkblue) but, and it's a pay attention but, if your iron is too strong, it will eventually eat it's way through the paper you write on, and the copper liquid is toxic. Do not ingest or dispose of without a lot of forethought.
Either way, the metals will make the already dark walnut ink into a rich black colour.......that stains so completely that it ruins clothing and leaves skin so stained that it takes an awful long while to remove, basically until you lose that top layer of skin.
It's a very good stain for wood though, which can be hard to obtain from most natural dyes.
M