Part 264

The common writing fluids depend mostly upon galls, logwood, or aniline for coloring. There are literally thousands of formulas. A few of the most reliable have been gathered together here:

I.—Aleppo galls (well bruised), 4 ounces; clean soft water, I quart; macerate in a clean corked bottle for 10 days or a fortnight or longer, with frequent agitation; then add of gum arabic (dissolved in a wineglassful of water), 1 1⁠/⁠2 ounces; lump sugar, 1⁠/⁠2 ounce. Mix well, and afterwards further add of sulphate of iron (green copperas crushed small), 1 1⁠/⁠2 ounces. Agitate occasionally for 2 or 3 days, when the ink may be decanted for use, but is better if the whole is left to digest together for 2 or 3 weeks. When time is an object, the whole of the ingredients may at once be put into a bottle, and the latter agitated daily until the ink is made; and boiling water instead of cold water may be employed. Product, 1 quart of excellent ink, writing pale at first, but soon turning intensely black.

II.—Aleppo galls (bruised), 12 pounds; soft water, 6 gallons. Boil in a copper vessel for 1 hour, adding more water to make up for the portion lost by evaporation; strain, and again boil the galls with water, 4 gallons, for 1⁠/⁠2 hour; strain off the liquor, and boil a third time with water, 2 1⁠/⁠2 gallons, and strain. Mix the several liquors, and while still hot add of green copperas (coarsely powdered), 4 1⁠/⁠2 pounds; gum arabic (bruised small), 4 pounds. Agitate until dissolved, and after defecation strain through a hair sieve, and keep in a bunged cask for use. Product, 12 gallons.

III.—Aleppo galls (bruised), 14 pounds; gum, 5 pounds. Put them in a small cask, and add boiling soft water, 15 gallons. Allow the whole to macerate, with frequent agitation, for a fortnight, then further add of green copperas, 5 pounds, dissolved in water, 7 pints. Again mix well, and agitate the whole once daily for 2 or 3 weeks. Product, 15 gallons.

«Brown Ink.»—I.—To make brown ink, use for coloring a strong decoction of catechu; the shade may be varied by the cautious addition of a little weak solution of bichromate of potash.

II.—A strong decoction of logwood, with a very little bichromate of potash.

«Blue Ink.»—To make blue ink, substitute for the black coloring sulphate of indigo and dilute it with water till it produces the required color.

«Anticorrosive or Asiatic Ink.»—I.—Galls, 4 pounds; logwood, 2 pounds; pomegranate peel, 2 pounds; soft water, 5 gallons. Boil as usual; then add to the strained, decanted cold liquor, 1 pound of gum arabic, lump sugar or sugar candy, 1⁠/⁠4 pound; dissolved in water, 3 pints. Product, 4 1⁠/⁠2 gallons. Writes pale, but flows well from the pen, and soon darkens.

II.—Bruised galls, 14 pounds; gum, 5 pounds. Put them in a small cask, and add of boiling water, 15 gallons. Allow the whole to macerate, with frequent agitation, for 2 weeks, then further add green copperas, 5 pounds, dissolved in 7 pints water. Again mix well, and agitate the whole daily for 2 or 3 weeks.

«Blue-Black Ink.»—Blue Aleppo galls (free from insect perforations), 4 1⁠/⁠2 ounces; bruised cloves, 1 drachm; cold water, 40 ounces; purified sulphate of iron, 1 1⁠/⁠2 ounces; pure sulphuric acid (by measure), 35 minims; sulphate of indigo (in the form of a paste), which should be neutral, or nearly so, 1 ounce. The weights used are avoirdupois, and the measures apothecaries’. Place the galls, then bruised with the cloves, in a 50-ounce bottle, pour upon them the water, and digest, often daily shaking for a fortnight. Then filter through paper in another 50-ounce bottle. Get out also the refuse galls, and wring out of it the remaining liquid through a strong, clean linen or cotton cloth, into the filter, in order that as little as possible may be lost. Next put in the iron, dissolve completely, and filter through paper. Then the acid, and agitate briskly. Lastly, the indigo, and thoroughly mix by shaking. Pass the whole through paper; just filter out of one bottle into another until the operation is finished.

NOTE.—No gum or sugar is proper and on no account must the acid be omitted. When intended for copying, 5 1⁠/⁠2 ounces of galls is the quantity. On the large scale this fine ink is made by percolation.

«Colored Inks.»—Inks of various colors may be made from a strong decoction of the ingredients used in dyeing, mixed with a little alum or other substance used as a mordant, and gum arabic. Any of the ordinary water-color cakes employed in drawing diffused through water may also be used for colored ink. {415}

«COPYING INK.»

This is usually prepared by adding a little sugar to ordinary black ink, which for this purpose should be very rich in color, and preferably made galls prepared by heat. Writing executed with this ink may be copied within the space of 5 or 6 hours, by passing it through a copying press in contact with thin, unsized paper, slightly damped, enclosed between 2 sheets of thick oiled or waxed paper, when a reversed transcript will be obtained, which will read in proper order when the back of the copy is turned upwards. In the absence of a press a copy may be taken, when the ink is good and the writing very recent, by rolling the sheets, duly arranged on a ruler, over the surface of a flat, smooth table, employing as much force as possible, and avoiding any slipping or crumbling of the paper. Another method is to pass a warm flatiron over the paper laid upon the writing. The following proportions are employed:

I.—Sugar candy or lump sugar, 1 ounce; or molasses or moist sugar, 1 1⁠/⁠4 ounces; rich black ink, 1 1⁠/⁠2 pints; dissolve.

II.—Malt wort, 1 pint; evaporate it to the consistence of a syrup, and then dissolve it in good black ink, 1 1⁠/⁠4 pints.

III.—Solazza juice, 2 ounces; mild ale, 1⁠/⁠2 pint; dissolve, strain, and triturate with lampblack (previously heated to dull redness in a covered vessel), 1⁠/⁠4 ounce; when the mixture is complete, add of strong black, 1 1⁠/⁠2 pints; mix well, and in 2 or 3 hours decant the clear.

After making the above mixtures, they must be tried with a common steel pen, and if they do not flow freely, some more unprepared ink should be added until they are found to do so.

«Alizarine Blue.»—In 20 parts of fuming sulphuric acid dissolve 5 parts of indigo, and to the solution add 100 parts of extract of aqueous myrobalous and 10.5 parts iron filings or turning shavings. Finally add:

Gum arabic 1.5 parts Sugar 7.5 parts Sulphuric acid, 66° B 10.5 parts Aniline blue 1.5 parts Carbolic acid 0.5 parts Mirobalan extract to make 1,000 parts.

This ink when first used has a bluish tint, afterwards becoming black.

«Alizarine Green.»—In 100 parts of aqueous extract of gall apples dissolve:

Iron sulphate 30 parts Copper sulphate 0.5 parts Sulphuric acid 2 parts Sugar 8 parts Wood vinegar, rectified 50 parts Indigo carmine 30 parts

«Copying Ink for Copying Without a Press.»—An ordinary thin-paper copying book may be used, and the copying done by transference. It is only necessary to place the page of writing in the letter book, just as one would use a leaf of blotting paper. The superfluous ink that would go into the blotting paper goes on to the leaf of the letter book, and showing through the thin paper gives on the other side of the leaf a perfect transcript of the letter. Any excess of ink on the page, either of the letter or of the copying paper, is removed by placing a sheet of blotting paper between them, and running one’s hand firmly over the whole in the ordinary manner. This ready transcription is accomplished by using ink which dries slowly. Obviously the ink must dry sufficiently slowly for the characters at the top of a page of writing to remain wet when the last line is being written, while it must dry sufficiently to preclude any chance of the copied page being smeared while subsequent pages are being covered. The drying must also be sufficiently rapid to prevent the characters “setting off,” as printers term it, from one page on to another after folding. The formula for the requisite ink is very simple:

Reduce by evaporation 10 volumes of any good ink to 6, then add 4 volumes of glycerine. Or manufacture some ink of nearly double strength, and add to any quantity of it nearly an equal volume of glycerine.

«Gold Ink.»—Mosaic gold, 2 parts; gum arabic, 1 part; rubbed up to a proper condition.

«Green Ink.»—A good, bright green, aniline ink may be made as follows:

Aniline green (soluble) 2 parts Glycerine 16 parts Alcohol 112 parts Mucilage of gum arabic 4 parts