I. A good shining ink.
1. Put four quarts of warm water in a glazed pipkin.
Add eight ounces of turpentine oil, and one pound of gallnuts bruised in a
mortar. Let the whole infuse thus for a week, then boil it gently, till
with a pen you may draw a stroke yellow and shiny with it. Strain it
through a strong cloth. Set it on a blasting fire, and as soon as it
boils, add seven ounces of green vitriol to it, keep stirring it with a stick
till it is perfectly dissolved. Let this rest for two days, without
disturbing it. There will be a skim on the to, which must be thrown off.
Decant next the clearest part into another vessel, which you set on a gentle
fire, to evaporate about two fingers of the liquor, then let it rest four or
five days, and it will be fit for use.
2. Rain water, or that in which walnuts have been infused are both
very good for making of ink.
3. With white wine, or old beer, you may likewise make very good
shining ink.
4. A carp's gall is very proper to mix among it.
II. To write on grease, and make the ink run on it.
1. Cut a bullock's gall open into a pan, and put a handful of salt and
about a quarter of a pint of vinegar to it, which you stir and mix well.
Thus you may keep the gall for twelve months, without its corrupting.
2. When you are writing, and you find your paper or parchment greasy,
put a drop of that gall among your ink in the inkhorn, and you will find no more
difficulty to make your pen mark.
III. An ink-stone, with which ink-stands
may be made, and with which you may write without ink.
IV. Write with common clear water.
Take gall nut powder, and vitriol calcined in the sun to whiteness, of each
four ounces, and sandarak, one and a half All being pulverized and mixed,
rub your paper with that powder; Then steeping you pen in any common water, and
writing with it, it will appear black like any other ink.
V. A good ink, both for drawing and writing.
1. Bruise with a hammer one pound of gall-nuts and put it to infuse
for a fortnight in the sun, in two quarts of clear water, stirring it now and
then. Strain this infusion through a sieve or cloth in a glazed pipkin.
2. In another vessel put two ounces of gum-arabic, and
half of the above infusion. In the other half which remains to dissolve
two ounces and a half of German green vitriol, and let it infuse for
four-and-twenty hours. Join afterwards both infusions together; and a week
afterwards, or thereabouts, the ink will be very good, and fit for use.
VI. To make very good ink without gall-nuts, which will be equally
good to wash drawings and plans, and strike very neat lines with the pen.
1. In half a pound of honey put one yolk of an egg, and beat it a good
while with a flat stick. Then asperse the matter over with three drachms
of gum arabic in subtile powder. Let this stay about three days, during
which, beat it often with a stick of walnut-tree wood.
2. Next to this, put to it such a quantity of lampblack
as will make it in consistence of a dough, which you make in cakes, and dry it
in the air, to render it portable.
3. When you want to use it, dilute it with water, or
with a lye made either of vine-wood ashes, or walnut tree, or oak, or even
peach-stones.
VII. An invisible ink.
VIII. Another way.
IX. To make a good India ink.
Burn some lamp-black in a crucible till the fume which arises
in doing it, has entirely subsided; grind it next on porphry, or marble, with a
pretty strong water of gum-tragacanth. Add an equal quantity of indigo
burnt, and grinded in the same manner. Then mix them both together on the
stone, and grind them for two hours. Gather up the composition, in a flat
square, of the height and thickness you are willing to give to your sticks.
Cut these with a knife to your intended size, and put them, if you choose, into
an iron mold; and lest the paste should stick to them, rub the inside of the
mold with lamp or ivory black, or with peach stones dust, which you burn in a
crucible stifled with a brick to stop it well.
X. Red ink.
Dissolve half an ounce of gum-arabic in three ounces of rose water. Then
with this water, dilute cinnabar, vermilion, or mimium.
Ink of any colour may be made in the same manner, by
substituting only a proper coloring ingredient to the aforementioned cinnabar,
etc.
XI. A green ink.
Grind together verdigrease, saffron, rue juice, then dilute
this paste in the above mentioned gum rose water.
XII. To make an ink which appears and
disappears alternately.
XIII.
The invisible method of conveying secrets.
XIV. An
ink to write over the other.
XV. Another
ink which
effaces the second, and makes first appear.
XVI. An ink which will go off in six days.
Write with willow-wood cinders, pulverized and diluted with
common water.
XVII. Another which you may rub off when you please.
Dilute gun-powder in common water, and write with it on a
piece of parchment; then when you want to efface it, take your handkerchief and
rub it off.
XVIII. Powder ink.
Take equal parts of black rosin, burnt peach, or apricot
stones, vitriol and gall nuts, and two of gum-arabic. Put the whole in
powder, or in a cake, as you like best.
XIX. An exceeding good writing ink.
1. Boil half a pound of India wood shavings in two
quarts of good vinegar, to the reduction of one half. Take off the
shavings, and substitute four ounces of gall nuts bruised, and put all into a
strong bottle, which you expose in the sun for three or four days, shaking it
during that time three or four times a day. Then add a dissolution of two
ounces and half of gum-arabic in half a pint of either water or vinegar,
Let the whole stand again in the sun for a week, shaking it several times every
day, during that term; strain that liquor afterwards, and keep it for use.
2. If you should want to render this ink shiny, you
must dissolve both the vitriol and gum arabic in an infusion of India wood, made
as before directed, with the addition of one handful of pomegranate rinds in the
bottle wherein the gall nut is.
3. If instead of setting this composition in the sun,
you should boil it, it will take but a quarter of an hour a-doing. But it
is never so good, and besides, always turns muddy.
XX. A gold color ink, without gold.
Put half a drachm of saffron, one of auripigment, and one
she-goat's or five or six jack halls in a glass bottle; and set for a fortnight
in hot horse dung. At the end of that term, add a gill of gum water; and
place it again for the same length of time in horse dung. Then it is fit
for use.
XXI. Another way.
Pulverize into an impalpable powder one ounce of orpine, and
as much crystal. Put this powder in five or six whites of eggs beaten,
then turned into water. Mix all well, and it will be fit either to write
to paint in gold colour.
XXII. To write in silver without silver.
Mix so well one ounce of the finest pewter and two of
quicksilver together, that both become quite fluid. Then grind it on
porphyry with gum-water, and write with it. All the writing will look then
as if done with silver.
XXIII. A good shining ink.
Infuse for a day in a quart of good table beer half a pound
of the blackest and most shiny gall nuts you can find. Add three ounces of
gum-arabic, and half an ounce of brown sugar candy, with four ounces of green
copperas. Then boil the whole in a glazed pipkin for about an hour, strain
it through a cloth, and put in in the cellar to keep for use.
XXIV. A blue ink.
Dilute half a pound of indigo with some flake white and
sugar, in a sufficient quantity of gum-water.
The same may be done with ultramarine, and gum-water.
XXV. A yellow ink.
Dilute in gum-water some saffron, or French berries, or
gamboge, and you will have a yellow ink. The same may be done with any
other coloring ingredient, to obtain an ink of the colour one likes to have.
XXVI. A green ink which may keep two years.
Put a pint of water on the fire in a varnished pipkin; and
when it is ready to boil, throw in two ounces of verdigrease pounded, and boil
it gently on a slow fire for the space of half an hour, stirring it often during
that time with a wooden spatula. Then add one ounce of white tartar, well
pulverized, and boil it one quarter of an hour. Strain two or three times
through a cloth, then set it before the fire to evaporate part of it, in order
to make it more shiny. But observe, that the more it boils, the more it
loses of its green colour, and approaches to the blue.
XXVII. A shining ink.
Put in a clean brass cauldron six quarts of white wine, or
beer, or rain water, with one pound of gall-nuts, and two ounces of roch-alum in
powder, which you boil all together, to restrain it through a cloth into a
glazed pipkin, and set in on the fire again for two hours longer. Then for
the three or four following days, observe to stir it well only with a little
stick, without boiling it at all it will be fit for use. Whenever you use
it, it will be very pale, but in twenty four hours after, it will be as black as
jet.
XXVIII. A way of writing which will not be
visible, unless you hold the paper to the sun, or the light of a candle.
XXIX. A secret to revive old writings, which are almost defaced.
Boil gall-nuts into wine; then steeping a sponge into that
liquor, and passing it on the lines of the old writing, all the letters which
were almost undecipherable will appear as fresh as newly done.
XXX. To write in gold or silver letters.
Take gold or silver in shells, and dilute it with some gum-arabic
water. Then dip either a pen or a pencil in it, and write.
XXXI. An iris on white paper.
Boil in a new iron pot any quantity of sublimate with common
water, and a handful of small nails. When the mercury begins to revivify,
which happens after two or three hours boiling, throw the whole in a pan of cold
water, half filled, and place it uncovered for one night, in a bog-house.
Then the colors will swim on the top. Observe that the pan must be
perforated at the lowest part on one side, and stop it with a cork or any other
common thing; and that a sheet of white paper must have been placed at the
bottom of it, previous to the half-filling it with the cold water, in which you
are directed to throw the boiling composition. After this has been left in
the bog house the space of one night, and the colors do swim on the top, unstop
the whole, and let the pan empty itself. Then the colors will settle, and
fix themselves on the sheet of paper; and when this begins to fry, take it quite
out of the pan, to finish drying in the shade.
XXXII. A shining ink.
1. In a quart of rain water settled, filtered and
purified, infuse for four or five hours, on a slow fire, one pound of gall-nuts,
choosing the smallest and blackest. Let them be previously bruised in a
mortar, with some pomegranate rinds, and raspings of fig-tree wood. Next
to this make a lye of six ounces of Roman vitriol, and boil it for the space of
one hour at least, stirring it with a stick of fig-tree wood; then let it rest
twelve hours, and sift it.
2. On the same ground you may add the same quantity of
water, and let it infuse three days; then boil it, as above directed, with new
copperas.
XXXIII. A common ink.
1. Bruise six ounces of gall-nuts, and as much gum
arabic, and nine of green vitriol. Put them afterwards in three quarts at
least, of river, spring, or rain water. Stir the composition three or four
times a day. And after seven days infusion, strain all through a cloth,
your ink is made.
2. This ground, as well as that above, will admit of
fresh water being put to it, with an addition of vitriol also.
XXXIV. How to prepare printers ink.
1. Take one pound of common turpentine, made with the
sandarak of the ancients, which is nothing else but juniper and linseed oil.
Add to it one ounce of rosin black, which is the smoke of it, and a sufficient
quantity of oil of nuts.
2. Set this composition on the fire, and boil it to a
good consistence. Such is the whole secret. Observe however, that in
the summer it must boil a little more, and a little less in the winter.
For in the summer the ink must be thicker, and thinner in the winter; because
the heat makes it more fluid. In which case it is therefore proper to boil
it a little more, or to diminish the quantity of oil, allowed in the proportion
to that of the turpentine.
XXXV. Preparation of the ink which serves to
write inscriptions, epitaphs, etc. on stones, marbles, etc.
XXXVI. The various ways of making an ink for writing.
1st Method. - Put three ounces of gall -nuts,
bruised on a stone, in thirty ounces of warm rain water. Let this be
exposed in the sun for two days, after which time add two ounces of the finest
green vitriol reduced into a subtile powder, and stir the liquor with a fig tree
stick. Let then the whole be exposed for two days longer in the sun.
Then put one ounce of gum arabic, or cherry-tree gum, and set it in the sun
again for one day, after which boil it one bubbly, and strain it directly
through a cloth. If too thick, add some water to it; if too thin,
gum-arabic.
