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. 

Making a leather 'penner'

 A 'penner' is a small leather box hung from your belt and used to carry your quill pens. They were a common part of scribal equipment in the middle ages. Thought I'd have a fling at making some. I'm using vegetable-tanned leather as it will be fairly hard and stiff once I've shaped it & let it dry. I'll also finish it with a water resistant coating which will harden it a bit more.

Dampen a strip of leather & wrap it around a wooden form to get the basic shape.

The long strip of leather on the left is 8 inches wide and several feet long. 8 inches will be the total height of the finished penner. The 1" x 2" pieces of wood are poplar. A strip of white cotton fabric wrapped around the damp leather holds the leather tightly around the wooden form.

Drying the leather around a wooden form will leave marks where the corners will be. Using a leather 'groover' pare away a tiny strip of leather on the inside of each corner. (the 'flesh' side of the leather) These grooves will help make the corners square.

The nearly-dry leather has already had shallow grooves cut on the flesh side. (inside of the penner box)
Removing this tiny strip of leather form the inside will give the corners room to bend into a square shape. The tool on the right is the 'groover' 

I then measured 2 inches from the top & cut straight across the width of the leather. The 2 inch piece will be the lid.

Here you can see the penner and lid dampened and wrapped around the wooden form again. I've cut 2 tiny slits on the narrow sides of both the penner and lid. These slits will form the channels for the cords which will eventually hold the penner together & hang it from a belt.

 I used a bamboo skewer to form the channels for the cords, but a small diameter knitting needle or something similar would also work.

A bamboo skewer passed through the slits to stretch the leather making a space large enough for the cords to pass through. The object to the right is a 'bone folder'. The folder is used to press the leather around the skewer and help stretch it into the proper shape.

This closer view shows how I used the bone folder to define the edges around the cord channels. This is part of the beauty of using vegetable tanned leather - it forms very nicely while damp and retains it's shape once it is dry.

Once the leather is totally dry, I can take it off the wooden form. Stitching the pieces together comes next. I'll be using an awl to pierce the stitching holes, linen thread, and a curved needle. The curved needle really helps reach into the tiny corners and tight spots of these shapes.

Comments Welcome!

More next week!