Making Ink 

Gum Arabic

I'm sure most of you are familiar with gum arabic. It's tree sap from a shrubby tree: Acacia senegal, although it was probably collected from Vachellia Nilotica (Acacia nilotica) and other species of acacia in the middle ages.

Native to Egypt.

The tree sap is collected as dried crystals.

Dried sap around a cut in the tree bark.

You can purchase it as crystals, powder, and in liquid form already dissolved in water.

Gum arabic helps to thicken the ink a bit & makes it flow through a pen more easily. You need a proper consistency for the ink to prevent it from blobbing and feathering out around the edges every time you touch your pen to the paper.