Crushing oak galls is great therapy!

 I just put the oak galls in a plastic bag & hit them with a hammer until all of the galls were broken into pieces.

Although there was a bit of powder after I crushed these galls, you can see I didn't totally pulverize them.

Ideally, you'd reduce all the oak galls to powder. The more surface area you create, the faster the gallo-tannic acid will leach from them.

Since I wasn't home much this weekend, I decided to try this recipe where you allow the oak galls to 'ferment' in water for 10 days or so. That way, I don't have to let them simmer/boil for several hours while I watch & stir.

Here are the quantities I'm using for this batch:

Oak galls - 4 parts by weight (In this case 4 ounces)

Iron Sulfate - 2 parts (2 ounces)

Gum Arabic - 1 part (1 ounce)

Water - 32 parts (32 ounces, or about 4 cups)

None of these measurements are exact. I'm using a 100g package of oak galls which is 3.527 ounces. I'll probably use a tablespoon to measure the iron sulfate & gum arabic.

4 ounces of smashed oak galls added to about 4 Cups of water in an old pickle jar. 

I've added the oak galls to tap water & loosely covered it with a lid to keep out contamination. After letting the mixture sit for 10 days, I'll filter out the chunks, add iron sulfate & gum arabic and see what happens. I'll probably crunch some more galls in the meantime & try a recipe where the galls are boiled before adding the other ingredients. Maybe I'll even try a batch with wine instead of water.

I'll post another photo tomorrow to compare if the water is getting any darker.

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.