Iron Rooibos Chai Ink

March 25, 2013

A couple of weeks ago I ran into an article extolling the virtues of Rooibos tea or Red Bush tea. We've been drinking it for years and especially enjoy Rooibos Chai with cocoanut milk, hot or cold. Anyway, among the virtues listed was a substantial gallic acid content. I suppose you can guess where this is going, Iron Rooibos Ink.

Feeling particularly uninspired this morning, I decided to give it a shot. The recipe is definitely in the development stage, but I thought I'd put the idea out here for others to try.

Ingredients

8 heaping Tbl Rooibos or Rooibos Chai

2 cups water

2 grams pharmaceutical grade Ferrous Sulphate (it's what I had handy)

Some yet to be determined amount of gum arabic.

Directions

Bring the Rooibos (or Rooibos Chai if you want your house to smell like Xmas) and water to a boil in a non-reactive pan and allow to simmer for about an hour. Attempt to strain out the lovely reddish brown liquid. I used a tea strainer followed by a gold plated coffee filter (it immediately clogged paper filters). I suspect the offending particles will eventually settle out. Return liquid to pan and reduce to 4 ounces. When reduced and slightly cooled, add to the ferrous sulphate and the liquid should turn greenish brown in a few seconds.

That's it. The small (approx 9cm wide) writing sample below, done on Rhodia Paper, is with no gum arabic, which may account for the less than stellar hairlines. I would suspect that with the correct amount of doctoring, very fine hairlines are possible. On more absorbent papers (e.g., Strathmore 100 cotton) the ink is nearly black.

The ink has an olive cast which doesn't appears here. BTW, I just tested. It's definitely water fast.

Edited March 25, 2013 by Mickey

March 25, 2013

real nice.

March 26, 2013

It turned out really pretty! I love the shading. You'll have to do a sunshine test on it and see how it does (see if it browns or fades quickly or remains stable). It sure sounds like an iron gall ink, turning different colors on different papers. Put several whole cloves in it to help keep it from molding over (it'll make it smell nice, too). Well done!

eta: you may not even need to add gum arabic. I don't bother to use gum arabic in my black walnut ink and it flows fine in a dip pen.

Edited March 26, 2013 by fiberdrunk

March 26, 2013

It turned out really pretty! I love the shading. You'll have to do a sunshine test on it and see how it does (see if it browns or fades quickly or remains stable). It sure sounds like an iron gall ink, turning different colors on different papers. Put several whole cloves in it to help keep it from molding over (it'll make it smell nice, too). Well done!

eta: you may not even need to add gum arabic. I don't bother to use gum arabic in my black walnut ink and it flows fine in a dip pen.

The ink on the page continues to darken and definitely won't rinse out of the paper, which I'd say is fairly definitive. I'll stick a sample page on a window sill and see what happens, but I don't expect much other than the residual stain from the Rooibos fading a bit, the marks becoming gradually more neutral grey.

Since my original post I added a healthy dose of gum arabic to half the ink (and I have another 2oz of tea concentrate without the ferrous sulphate.) With the gum Arabic it's much better behaved, yielding just about as tight a line as a fresh bottle of McCaffery's - great hairlines. Where the ungummed ink worked only on smaller diameter nibs (Esterbrook 128, Seminary 541), the treated ink works well with larger diameter, more flexible points like the modern Principal and Hunt 101.

Since I used Rooibos Chai as the base, I believe all the sweet spices in it already will preserve it. We'll see. It does smell pretty festive.

I'm very encouraged. This may be the cheapest, high performance dip pen ink possible (4oz of ink for about $2.00)

March 26, 2013

Very pleasing indeed!

Bookmarked for when my supply of Rikyu-cha runs out. (I'm a big tea fan, so I have two inks named after tea and am toying with a third, but this is the logical next step.)

I realise you say the olive cast isn't showing, but what's there is pretty much the colour of Diamine Graphite on buff cartridge paper, which I like enough. But more olive, in my book, can only be a good thing.