Charcoal Ink

A couple of years ago, I experimented with ink using a recipe featuring oak galls and iron. This recipe is far less toxic, but every bit as fussy. I am making a charcoal ink for one of my entries for this year's Pentathalon. Vines didn't work for me, as they incinerated too quickly and turned into grey schmutz. An alternate source for the charcoal (one described as making a "perfect" black by Ceninni in the 15th ce) is peach pits. Even when completely dried, the pits are like hardwood and don't readily catch on fire. Once they begin to smoulder though, they burn like little pre-fab charcoal briquettes. I wrapped mine in tinfoil in Shaun's BBQ to try to get them to burn hot and slowly with as little air for oxidizing as possible. They need to completely carbonize for ink.

After they had stopped smoking and started to cool, I broke them up inside a plastic baggie with a hammer. Unfortunately, the insides were still brown, not charred at all. So I flamed the biggest pieces with a lighter till they were all black and started to crumble.\



I had to break them further with the hammer, and try to sift out all the unburnt shards. Then began the very very long process of grinding...

And I do mean long... I think between wetting, scraping, grinding, regathering, grinding, wetting some more, grinding, etc., etc. I worked the carbonized bits for almost 45 minutes on a piece of stone tile with a stone "rope" edging that Uncle Bear cut off for me. After all that, I still had to dry it and sift it to get the little unburned specs out of the dust.

 

 

At the very end, I added some gum arabic that I had ground up - maybe 1/8 tsp - to help it bind together better. I will present this ink with what's left of my oak gall ink side-by-side for the judges to compare.