“I have only farther to add, that one of the best substances for diluting ink, if it be in the first instance too thick for use, or afterwards become so by evaporation, is a strong decoction of coffee, which appears in no respect to promote the decomposition of the ink, while it improves its color and gives it an additional lustre.”
Dr. Ure recommends the following formula for the manufacture of writing ink. To make twelve gallons take: 12lb of nutgalls; 5lb of green sulphate of iron; 5lb of gum Senegal; 12 gallons of water. The bruised nutgalls are to be put into a cylindrical copper, of a depth equal to its diameter, and boiled during three hours, with three-fourths of the above quantity of water, taking care to add fresh water to replace what is lost by evaporation. The decoction is to be emptied into a tub, allowed to settle, and the clear liquor being drawn off, the lees are to be drained. The gum is to be dissolved in a small quantity of hot water, and the mucilage thus formed, being filtered, it is added to the clear decoction. The sulphate of iron must likewise be separately dissolved and well mixed with the above. The color darkens by degrees, in consequence of the peroxidizement of the iron, on exposing the ink to the action of the air.
But ink affords a more durable writing when used in the pale state, because its particles are then finer and penetrate the paper more intimately. When ink consists chiefly of tannate {312} of peroxide of iron, however black, it is merely superficial, and is easily erased or effaced. Therefore, whenever the liquid made by the above prescription has acquired a moderately deep tint, it should be drawn off clear into bottles and well corked up. Some ink-makers allow it to mould a little in the casks before bottling, and suppose that it will thereby be not so liable to become mouldy in the bottles. A few bruised cloves or other aromatic perfume, added to ink, is said to prevent the formation of mouldiness, which is produced by the ova of infusoria animalcules.
The ink made by this prescription is much more rich and powerful than many of the inks commonly sold. To bring it to the common standard a half more water may safely be added. Even twenty gallons of tolerable ink may be made from the above weight of materials.
SCOTT’S WRITING INK.—Mr. Scott’s method of manufacturing writing ink, as patented by him in 1840, is as follows:—Take 48lb of logwood chips, and let them be saturated two days in soft water, then put the same into a close covered iron cauldron, and add 80 gallons of soft water; let these be boiled one hour and a half, when the wood must be taken out and the fluid left, to which add 48lb of the best picked Aleppo galls in coarse powder; boil these half an hour longer, then draw off the fire, and let it remain in the cauldron twenty-four hours infusing, during which it is to be very frequently agitated; when the properties of the galls are sufficiently extracted, draw off the clear fluid into a vat, and add 40lb of pulverized sulphate of iron; let these ingredients remain a week (stirring daily), after which add four gallons of vinegar. Next take 71⁄2lb of the best picked gum arabic, and dissolve it in sufficient water to form a good mucilage, which must be well strained, and then added to the fluid by degrees; let these stand a few days longer, when pour into the same 20 ounces of the concentrated nitrate of iron; let the whole stand by again until it has arrived at its height of blackness; next pour the clear fluid off from the sediment, and add to it the following substances, each prepared and ground separately:— {313}
First, take half a pound of Spanish indigo, which grind very fine between a muller and stone, adding by degrees portions of the ink until it is made into an easy soluble paste; next take well-washed and purified Prussian blue five pounds, which prepare as the former, except grinding it in distilled water in lieu of the fluid, until it is formed into a soluble paste; also next take four ounces of gas black which results from the smoke of gas burners received on surfaces of glass, as is well known, which grind in one ounce of the nitrate of iron; when each is sufficiently fine, let them remain a few hours unmixed, when the whole may be incorporated with the fluid, and kept agitated daily for a week. The clear may then be poured off for use. The above will make eighty gallons of ink.
DR. NORMANDY’S BLACK INK.—In order to supersede the use of nutgalls, Dr. Normandy patented the following process for making black ink:—
Take either sumach, elm wood, elder, chestnut, beech, willow, oak, plum, sycamore, cherry, poplar wood, catechu, or any other wood or berry, or extract of vegetable substances, containing gallic acid and tannin, or either, and put this, previously reduced to powder, into a copper full of common water, and boil it until a sufficiently strong decoction be obtained.
The quantity of water must of course vary according to the sort of vegetable substance employed; catechu, for example, requiring less water than sumach, on account of the former being almost totally soluble. To this add a certain quantity of Campeachy wood, of acetate and hydrate of deutoxide of copper, of sulphate of alumina and potash, of sulphate of protoxide of iron, in quantities which vary also according to the vegetable material first employed, and gum arabic, or the best sort of gum Senegal, in the proportion of eighty pounds or thereabouts for 340 gallons of liquid; also a variable quantity of sulphate of indigo; the whole of these last ingredients, depending on the shade of the color intended to be produced, it is impossible to indicate absolutely the proportions in which they are to be used, as the taste and fancy of the operator must {314} decide. Supposing, however, a blue black to be the color desired, and sumach, for example, the vegetable ingredient selected for the purpose, the proportions should be for 240 gallons: sumach, from 12 to 15 sacks, of four bushels each; Campeachy logwood, 2 cwt. or thereabouts, according as new or old chip is used; gum arabic, 80 lb. to 1 cwt.; sulphate of protoxide of iron, 1 cwt.; acetate and hydrate of deutoxide of copper, 4lb; sulphate of alumina and potash, 37lb; sulphate of indigo, 6lb, or even more, according to the intensity of the blue cast desired. If catechu were to be used instead of sumach, 1 cwt. would be required, the proportions of the other materials remaining the same.
The variously colored precipitates which salts of iron form in the solutions of the above-cited vegetable astringent substances, all of which precipitates vary from the green to the brown (the decoction of nutgalls yeilding with salts of iron only a dark purple,) are the obstacles which have hitherto prevented the use of these vegetable substances, with a view to supersede nutgalls; but by means of the sulphate of indigo in various proportions, from the above-cited substances a liquid may be obtained, of different shades of color, from dark blue to most intense black, applicable to dyeing, staining, or writing, and which may be used with every description of pen.