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Leather, Ink, and Miscellaneous: Make

Make into balls.

WRITING INK Ink.-Inks are of several classes, as writing inks, marking or indelible inks, and printing inks. Writing inks may be black or colored. Black writing inks are chiefly nutgall iron inks, made from a solution of Aleppo nutgalls with copperas; chrome logwood inks, made by the addition of 1 part of potassium chromate to 1,000 parts of saturated solution of logwood; aniline inks, made of coal-tar products, as nigrosine, eosin, etc., and carbon inks, made of a resinous alkaline solution mixed with lampblack. Marking inks are chiefly lampblack, or nitrate of silver. Colored inks are now made chiefly of aniline coal-tar products.

It is important to understand the nature of these different materials in order to choose the various kinds of ink required; to make them properly, if desirable, either for home use or for sale; to keep them properly, and to erase them when they produce any accidental stains. These points are the more important for the reason that since the use of coal-tar colors or aniline dyes, especially nigrosine, dating from about 1867, old-fashioned recipes for taking out ink stains have become untrustworthy. Unfortunately, a great many of these recipes taken from old books are still being published. Hence care must be taken not to be misled by instructions which were correct when they were first given, but can no longer be relied on.

To Make Black Ink. - Formerly black ink was usually made by exposing to the air a solution of green vitriol in an infusion of gallnuts in water containing dissolved gum, sugar, or mucilage. The result was a fine precipitate of tannate of iron held in suspension by the gum. Writing done with these inks was of a palebrown color, which, however, turned black on the paper. They are still in use, and recipes for making them will be given; but they are open to the objections that they corrode steel pens, tend to settle on standing, and the writing fades to a yellow or brown tint with age. Many old letters dating from war times are in existence the writing of which is almost faded from the paper.