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Is there such a thing as a fountain pen friendly iron gall *recipe*? Not a mass marketed commercial ink. I assume it would have to be without gum arabic at least.

What do you do with shimmer inks that you don't like? Try to make them into shimmer inks that you do like... I was aiming for a grey here, but I got a black instead. It's still nice. I haven't noticed anything funky settling on the bottom of my mixing jar in 24 hours, with the exception, obviously, of glitter particles. 2 parts Pelikan Edelstein Sapphire 1 part Diamine Golden Oasis 1 part Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Red 1 part Caran d'Ache Cosmic Black I'm fairly sure you could replace any of these colours with a generic enough royal blue, bright orangy-red, and black ink and get very similar results to this. The green has to be Diamine for the gold particles, though. Sparkle shows up just fine, most noticably on absorbant papers like Leuchtturm and Oxford. Does well on Clairefontaine. Looks very sparse on Tomoe River. Tested with a FPR Himalaya ultra flex nib (very wet writer). Images follow: Leuchtturm 1917: Tomoe River (the heavier one. 62gsm?): Left: Clairefontaine Triomphe 90gsm Right: Oxford Optik 90gsm Oxford Optik shimmer: Clairefontaine shimmer:

In December 2014, the Fountain Pen Network contributor "Masque" offered a recipe for a highly shading teal ink that he named "Black Swan in Icelandic Minty Bathwater." The mix is composed of three Noodler's Inks: Navajo Turquoise, Massachusetts 54th, and Old Manhattan Blackest Black (an exclusive to Fountain Pen Hospital). I enjoy Nathan Tardif's Black Swan inks, both the Australian Roses and English Roses versions, which embed a mysterious black shadow in a subtle, lovely color, as well as another mix by the FPN contributor "crunchmaster," called "Black Swan in North African Violets." It's entertaining and unexpectedly educational to watch Tardif incorporate economic and historical concepts within ink, of all things -- in this case, how economies and organizations should consider the dramatic and always unexpected impact of "unknown unknowns," described in Nassim Taleb's book, The Black Swan. Realizing recently that I owned each of these three inks, I mixed Masque's recipe. His proportions -- 15 parts Navajo Turquoise, 3 parts Massachusetts 54th and 1 part Old Manhattan Blackest Black -- produce a gorgeous, reliable, highly shading teal ink. A comparison with other inks reveals similarity with Sailor Jentle Yama Dori, though without the sheening properties. Other FPN ink mix developers in the "Icelandic Mint" thread attempted blends with other versions of black, with varying degrees of success. Masque's recipe is highly successful, as is another by the FPN contributor "Intellidepth," composed of 2.5mL Noodler's Navajo Turquoise, 2 drops Noodler's Yellow, and 2 drops Noodler's Black (bulletproof). With black swan versions of red, violet, and teal, likely next candidates include blue and brown. Black Swan in Chocolate Pansies? Black Swan in Blue Sage?

Greetings and Salutations! Well, after a lonnnngg break from ink mixing and fountain pen faffing I've finally returned and had some fun. I decided that I wanted to make my own ink. Not mix, but MAKE. First off, I have to give all the credit to Pharmacist since this ink is based on his recipe. I did deviate on some of the steps but I will explain that below. The biggest hurdle was to get hold of Gallic Acid. I searched high and low and could not find ANY in South Africa, but finally managed to get some imported by a chemical company. The rest of the chemicals are quite easily obtained here. So without dragging this out, here's the recipe: 5ml glycerine (I did not add this, as I will explain after) 1gm Gallic Acid 1.5 gm ferrous sulphate (hydrated?) (FE2SO4.7H2O) 200 mg salicyclic acid (preservative to prevent mould) 1ml hydrochloric acid 25% distilled water Steps 1. Dissolve gallic & salicylic acid in 40ml hot distilled water 2. Dissolve ferrous sulphate in 40ml hot distilled water 3. Add hydrochloric acid to (2) 4. Add (3) to (1) 5. Add 10ml Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue to (4) - did not add 6. Add glycerine to (5) - did not add Okay, the recipe is easy and straight forward. I did not perform step 5 & 6, so I ended up with a base iron mix that is pale lavender in colour. On paper it is basically invisible for the first 10 seconds after which it starts turning black. The reason I did not do the last two steps is to be able to experiment with different colours etc. I took 3ml of the base, added .5ml glycerine and .5ml Waterman Purple. The result is a light purple ink that darkens to something I would swear is the exact same ink as R&K Scabiosa. I've tried the ink in a cheap eye dropper with a bit of a scratchy nib (yeah yeah, Im too lazy to smooth it), but the ink flows nicely. Shading is very good and since it Is and IG, it is waterproof in the sense that only the added dye/ink will wash away, leaving the black IG component on the paper. The test was done on Tamoe River (cream). I do not have proper tools to measure the acidity of the base or final ink but after a week in the cheapy pen (no precipitation or gunking) I can't see any adverse effects yet. I'm linking the smaller version of the scan and including a link to the full sized version. http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g459/NeelsK/Ink%20Mixes/Pseudo-Scabiosa-small_zps53115ce6.gif Link to full size scan: http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g459/NeelsK/Ink%20Mixes/Pseudo-Scabiosa-full_zps1a751451.gif~original

So I got bored and I had some samples left and I decided to mash them up and the result was a beautiful dark purple. The mix is equal parts of: Rouge hematite, stormy grey, de atramentis Atlantic blue and noodler's Navy. The gold sparkle is outrageous as expected. I just loved it. It flows ok and with a fine ef twsbi it still looks very pretty. I imagine that with a wetter nib the gold flare will pop-up even more. Water resistance is legible but it does get really washed out. I'll try to get some decent pictures so you can get what shade of purple this is. Cheers