Iron Gall Ink

I have not tried it, but this person has claimed to have improved his formulation of iron gall ink to no longer eat away at paper: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simplifier.neocities.org&#x2F;irongall" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simplifier.neocities.org&#x2F;irongall</a>

This company makes phenomenal Iron Gall Inks. The ink dries quite fast (I&#x27;m left handed, so that is important), shows very interesting shading properties and is super cheap.<p>I suggest you to try them. It&#x27;s a nice experience.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rohrer-klingner.de&#x2F;en&#x2F;writing-ink&#x2F;?lang=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rohrer-klingner.de&#x2F;en&#x2F;writing-ink&#x2F;?lang=en</a><p>About the pens, you can find very nice fountain pens on aliexpress, starting from 4 USD including delivery. For example Jinhao X159, 9019 and 9016.<p>To have more shading, I suggest M nibs.

I make this! (I got into making dyes for all natural tie-dye shirts)<p>It&#x27;s cool and relatively easy, but it will eat your paper. It&#x27;s a cool novelty, but not for anything you want to store long term.

I wonder whether oak gall ink is vegan. The larvae of the gallflies (actually wasps) that grow in oak galls emerge as adults in early summer, according to the Wildlife Trust, leaving the gall mostly intact. Thus, theoretically, it should be possible to make oak gall ink without harming any animals. It would still be an animal product, but produced only from by-products of a wild animal. But then again, perhaps changes in the chemical composition of the gall throughout the larvae&#x27;s development make such late-harvested galls unsuitable for ink production.

Maybe I was skimming too fast, maybe someone can answer here: Historically oak or other galls were used as a source to produce vegetable acids (tannic or gallic acid). I gather from the gallic acid article that galls are easy to crush. Is this why they are used rather than some other presumably more-readily-available part of the tree? Is there something unique about the gall, e.g. it contains more of certain chemicals&#x2F;biomaterials?

I have handled a letter from John Ruskin (victorian art critic) which was like lacework, from the Iron-Gall ink eating out the paper. Very odd effect if you haven&#x27;t seen it before. (it was not kept in archive conditions)

You can add a little calcium carbonate to these inks to give them a little shine and offset some of the acidity.<p>The really neat thing about these inks is that they are soluble when made, and you can write on a document, then - as they dry - , the soluble iron tannates that work into the fibers form an Fe3+ tannate, which is insoluble - you aren&#x27;t writing on the surface, you&#x27;re dying the fibers. This is why palimpsest can occur when documents where scraped and re-used (so you can read the originals with Xray methods)<p>Source: I have a battery patent based on iron-gall inks (US10749168B1), and it&#x27;s fun stuff to play with! (see more @ <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bigattichouse.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bigattichouse.com</a> )

Iron inks are fun. They&#x27;re pretty stable, stain like crazy, but some of them will eat away at thin things like paper, so they&#x27;re best used on leathers, velours, and other tanned materials. I make a blue using ferric ammonium sulfate and sodium ferrocyanide mixed in water.

Iron Gall ink was used on both the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence. It can last for many centuries, unfortunately it can fade if exposed to strong sunlight, which is why the declaration of independence is so faded. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pbs.org&#x2F;wgbh&#x2F;nova&#x2F;transcripts&#x2F;3206_charters.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pbs.org&#x2F;wgbh&#x2F;nova&#x2F;transcripts&#x2F;3206_charters.html</a>

Has the ink on the Voynich manuscript been dated? As far as I know, not.<p>The parchment &#x2F; vellum is dated to 1425 or so but the iron gall ink could be anywhere up to almost current day.<p>Is there any strong evidence of the age of the writing?

If you want to write with a permanent ink today that would still be there after a few hundred years, what would be your best choice?