OAK GALL INK

I’ve had these oak galls for nearly a year so they are completely dried and ready to go!

Oak Gall INK RECIPE

INGREDIENTS

• 40 grams of dried oak gall

• 350 mls water

• Gum arabic

• Iron Sulphate (I used 2 iron tablets)

METHOD

1. Grind the oak galls to a powder in a pestle or mortar

2. Place in a pot and add 350mls of filtered water

3. Left to soak for 5 days

4. Filter the liquid through coffee filters into a glass jar

5. Crush up iron tablets in pestle and mortar and add to ink, mixing well

6. Add 10 drops of gum arabic

Ground down oak galls - I got a bit impatient and figured this would be ground down enough - it’s a good mix of fine powder and small chunks of the oak galls

I added 350 mls of filtered water to the crushed oak galls and left them to steep over 5 days. I think 2 days would have been sufficient, but I couldn’t get back to them before then.

I then strained the liquid through coffee filters several times to ensure that only the liquid (and not the grinds) were getting through.

I ground up 2 iron tablets in the pestle & mortar and added them to the oak gall liquid and shook well to mix it all up.

I added various mixtures to see how the base ink reacted with each one and got a lovely variety of colours - I really like the oak gall ink with the iron mix - it’s a lovely deep black / grey

I used up the remainder of the inks seeing how each mix interacted with each other.