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Making Yncke

To make common yncke of Wyne take a quart,

Two ounces of gomme, let that be a parte,

Five ounces of galles, of copres take three,

Long standing dooth make it better to be;

If wyne ye do want, rayne water is best,

And as much stuffe as above at the least:

If yncke be to thick, put vinegar in,

For water dooth make the colour more dimme.

In hast for a shift when ye have a great nead,

Take woll, or wollen to stand you in steede;

Which burnt in the fire the powder bette small

With vinegre, or water make yncke with all.

If yncke ye desire to keep long in store

Put bay salte therein, and it will not hoare.

Of that common yncke be not to your minde

Some lampblack thereto with gomme water grinde

(From an English book of handwriting entitled "A Book Containing Divers Sorts of Hands", by John de Beau Chesne and M. John Baildon, and published in 1571)

Since before medieval times, ink has been made this way from these widely available ingredients:

Oak galls
Wine, beer or rain water
Vitriol/Copperas (Iron Sulfate)
Gum arabic

Ink was also made from carbon (lamp black or pure soot) mixed with a binder, but this ink can be scraped from the surface after it has dried. Oak gall ink, on the other hand, preciptates a chemical iron complex in situ, on contact with oxygen. For this reason it was much preferred for use in legal documents, since the ink penetrates the paper or vellum, and the black colour is chemically precipitated within the paper.

The Iron Gall Ink website, maintained by the Dutch Ministry of Culture

So you could say oak gall ink is cryptographically secure, in that there is a one way chemical "hash" process that binds the paper to the ink in a non-reversible way. Good for signing that lease document.

To Ebonise a Lute

I wanted to make some oak gall ink, to use as a wood dye for a lute I'm making. Hundreds of years ago, ebony was too expensive and not generally available, so wood was sometimes "ebonised" to make it black. Surface stains such as with carbon will rub off too quickly, whereas oak gall ink puts the black colour into the wood - much more durable in colour and more refined in appearance.

Get cooking

Here is the recipe I followed - not the delightfully spelled one above, but based on another historic recipe from the Iron Gall Ink website. You'll also need some precise scales and a container to boil the ink. I bought some glass beakers online, like those used in school chemistry lab.

Crush 18g of oak galls (approx 5 oak galls) into small pieces by bashing them with a hammer inside a plastic bag.
Boil the crushed galls with 130ml distilled water, topping up from time to time with more distilled water as it evaporates. It will smell quite bad and turn from a pale yellow solution to a dark brown one.
Leave to cool.
Filter the mixture using a funnel and coffee paper. Obviously do not use any kitchen equipment for this.
Separately mix 7g of Gum Arabic, 8g Iron Sulfate with 15ml distilled water.
Add the Gum Arabic mix into the filtered liquid. It will turn black.

Testing

When you first use it, the ink is a mid grey colour, and you wonder if it really worked. Be patient - it is reacting with the oxygen in the air, and 10 minutes later the ink will darken to a beautiful and very opaque blue-black.

1 hour later the ink is quite black and there is no residue.

Photo of some test yncke splodges

I'm looking forward to testing it on some timber next.

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