Pharmacist's Iron Gall Ink

[gmrza]

Probably one of the inks that has generated the most interest in recent months on FPN is Pharmacist's home-brewed Urkundentinte, an iron gall ink based on a formulation used by the German government until the 1970s. I couldn't resist, and organised a group shipment to Australia. After getting the ink yesterday, I have taken the time to play around and do some comparisons, so without further ado, here is my review of the ink.

 

Pharmacist's Urkundentinte generally exhibits the kinds of characteristics you would expect of an iron gall ink - it is well-behaved on lousy paper, it doesn't bleed, it doesn't feather and it can be used in fire-hose pens. It is an ink with a very low viscosity, although I would not say it is the driest writing ink that I have. While my Waterman Expert can still be fed this ink, I feel it puts down too much on the page to really enjoy the shading this ink exhibits - and yes, it does shade!

 

Where this ink differs from a lot of commercially available iron gall inks is that it is a vintage style ink, with a much higher iron gall content, even than Rohrer und Klinger Salix and Scabiosa. As a result, the colour change is much more dramatic as the iron gall pigment precipitates after the ink is laid down on paper. Due to the aniline blue dye used in the ink, it initially writes in a blue colour, not unlike Lamy Blue (although a little paler). As you write the ink begins to change colour, with the reaction chasing your pen along the page. After a few hours the colour turns to a very saturated blue-black with lots of shading on glossier papers like Clairefontaine. The saturation of the final colour far exceeds that of R&K Salix, which is closest to this ink of all the other iron gall inks I own. Due to the high saturation, I find that this ink is even very usable in an extra-fine nib, although in my Lamy Safaris and Studio, I expect that I will settle on a fine, or possibly medium nib for this ink. In the Safari that I have been using this ink in, it also performed very nicely with a 1.1mm italic nib.

 

As far as permanent inks go, one aspect where all the IG inks I have outperform Noodler's Black is that they do not smudge once dry.

 

Now that I have Pharmacist's Urkundentinte, I am very tempted to pour my bottle of Lamy Blue-Black down the toilet (no I won't really be doing that). When compared to other IG inks, of the ones I have, only R&K Salix and Scabiosa come close. MB Blue-Black looks downright chalky by comparison. I only have 4ml of MB Blue-Black left, so that is at least a relief. Lamy Blue-Black exhibits very little colour change and is much less saturated. R&K Salix and Scabiosa are awesome inks in their own right, and I am very fond of them. Pharmacist's Urkundentinte has however edged them out to be my favourite IG ink now.

 

Note that I have left all the images in fairly high resolution, in order to permit readers to download them for closer examination.

 

http://www.rehmet.alt.za/wp-content/uploads/urkundentinte/review.jpg

 

 

I have done "solvent" tests on separate sheets, bathing a set of samples in water, acetone and shellite (white gas for the Americas, benzine for the South Africans, Reinigungsbenzin for the Germans) respectively for about 30 seconds. It is amazing how the acetone just washes off the ballpoint ink, almost instantaneously! The IG inks just laughed off the entire experience:

 

http://www.rehmet.alt.za/wp-content/uploads/urkundentinte/solvents-pre.jpg

 

 

http://www.rehmet.alt.za/wp-content/uploads/urkundentinte/solvents-post.jpg

 

 

I tested the ink on Clairefontaine 90gsm, Reflex Ultrawhite 80gsm copy paper and A Spirax No 595 notebook (cheap, yuck). The ink performs well on all of these papers. Samples of Urkundentinte and a few other inks are below:

 

First: Clairefontaine 90gsm

 

http://www.rehmet.alt.za/wp-content/uploads/urkundentinte/urkunde-clairfontaine.jpg

 

 

 

Reflex Ultrawhite (the review form is on Reflex Ultrawhite):

 

http://www.rehmet.alt.za/wp-content/uploads/urkundentinte/samples1-reflex.jpg

 

 

 

 

Spirax No 595 (cheap, nasty paper):

 

http://www.rehmet.alt.za/wp-content/uploads/urkundentinte/urk-spirax.jpg

[lapis]

Thanks! Excellent review!! I think that this ink is the one I have been looking at most, lately. Or the "ones" as in the various brew issues.

 

Mike

[pharmacist]

Since I have enough demand to brew a new batch, I will start to make another liter of this ink. Meanwhile I will experiment with another formula with other colours (yes, yes, yes !!!) and I will keep you informed about more fancy colours .

 

I managed to do some survey about other dye's using my Martindale and I have chosen some other dyes, which should be compatible with the IG content without precipitation.

 

The dye colours are yellow, orange, red, blue and I will try to mix the colours to produce colours like brown, purple and green. So you will get IG inks like: red>brown, green>black, purple>black.

 

 

[fiberdrunk]

Beautiful ink!

[jandrese]

I love this stuff, thanks for posting!

 

Hope to see Pharmacists IG colors experiments result in other awesome IG inks.

 

Until then I hope my two bottles last...

[Uncle Red]

Love the review.

[gmrza]

Since I have enough demand to brew a new batch, I will start to make another liter of this ink. Meanwhile I will experiment with another formula with other colours (yes, yes, yes !!!) and I will keep you informed about more fancy colours .

 

I managed to do some survey about other dye's using my Martindale and I have chosen some other dyes, which should be compatible with the IG content without precipitation.

 

The dye colours are yellow, orange, red, blue and I will try to mix the colours to produce colours like brown, purple and green. So you will get IG inks like: red>brown, green>black, purple>black.

 

 

 

The ones that would interest me the most would be red->brown and purple->black. I already enjoy R&K Scabiosa a lot - what would be great is something a bit "edgier" - a more "in your face" purple to start with would be quite fun.

 

 

 

[gmrza]

Some additional notes:

 

While I have found this ink to be well-behaved even with my wettest-writing pen, using a very wet writer just results in a dark black line once the oxidation process is complete. This is because the ink is so saturated. In order to get more subtle results, especially shading, a slightly drier-writing pen is advantageous. I have found Lamy M and on of my Lamy F nibs give nice results. (I have 3 Lamy Z50 F nibs, and they all deliver lines of differing thickness!)