India Ink in isopropyl alcohol

[Taigatrommel]

Hi all,

 

I'm trying to weather some timbers for harbour fendering/baulks, and to start with I followed advice from various sources, using india ink (Daler Rowney Khandahar) diluted in isopropyl alcohol.  Unfortunately, the ink seems to have broken down into dye particles rather than creating an even wash - this was a new jar of ink, bought a couple of weeks ago and diluted three days ago.  I've given it a thorough shaking and stirring, but I can't get a medium for an even wash from it.

 

If anyone has any advice or suggestions on what the problem might be, I'd appreciate it.  This is a new technique for me.

[peterfgf]

I suspect India Ink is water based and needed water to dilute it.  As at sea, "oil and water don't mix".

Peterfgf

[phil_sutters]

The Daler Rowney site says about Khandahar 'Ideal for illustration work and in mixed media technique, for example with watercolour.' This implies that it is water-based I would have thought. They also say that it is not waterproof when dry.

[Nearholmer]

 

Alcohol certainly mixes very happily with water, its one of the most hygroscopic things around, and according to Daler's data-sheet the ink in question is "completely miscible" in water.

 

Try acrylic artists inks, let-down with Tamiya acrylic thinners. I had a lot of good experience with this combination.

 

By choosing from the masses of colours available, you can get better weathering shades than with plain indian black.

 

I suspect that the Tamiya thinner is no more than dilute alcohol, with a teeny dash of some sort of detergent in it to break down surface tension and prevent the sort of 'clumping' that you are experiencing, so maybe you should try a very, very tiny drip of washing-up liquid in your mix.

 

You might also want to try varying dilutions of alcohol. If you bought yours from a chemist, the label should tell you what dilution it is at "as purchased". Too much water and it will lift the grain of wood and mess about with card, but too little and it seems not to work quite right either. When I was heavily into all this, I used to make up jars of 'brew' for weathering using different mixes.

 

These are old bottles of ink ....... labels/brands may have changed since I bought these.

Edited February 12, 2020 by Nearholmer

[03060]

Hello, I'm a Lithographic web offset printer by trade and we used to use Alcohol (before H&S tightened it's noose) as part of our water mixture to print with to lower the surface tension and so, basically, allow a thinner film of water to be spread across the printing plate. Whilst this was with oil based inks the water in the system was mixed to a solution with 2.5 to 5 % of Fount additive and if memory serves me rightly 10 to 15% alcohol, too much of either of these additives would start to break the ink down too much (it is supposed to break it down a little) and cause printing issues.

 

It may be that you have just used too much alcohol in your mixture ?

 

Regards,

Ian.

[Taigatrommel]

I'll try a couple of different water/alcohol mixes, this was straight IPA.

 

On a slightly different tack, I think the ink in its bottle has separated quite a bit.  Although I'd given it a good shake before using, I dipped a brush in to give it a stir too and there's a gunky layer at the bottom of the jar.  Furthermore, where the jar has sat since having the solution made up for weathering the remaining marking on the bottle is flecks of dye rather than looking like a wash.  Old stock from the shop?  Unfortunately my nearest decent art shop is 15 miles away, my ink came from Hobbycraft, not exactly a place for expert advice.  I think I'll take a drive down at the earliest opportunity to try and get a fix on what's normal behaviour for the inks.

[Nearholmer]

Is it actually "straight IPA"? I've never seen it for sale over the counter to the public in that form, even before evil uses for it became widely understood and sales got restricted. Off-hand, I can't remember the typical dilution of what used to be sold by pharmacists, but I think it might have contained c20% water.

 

As an aside, it would be interesting to know what the pigment in the ink is. Traditional india ink was made from lamp-black (and in this country I think from a strange naturally-occurring version of the same thing called Bideford Black, IIRC).

 

As a further aside, I used to reserve a 12V power drill with worn-out bearing for stirring things, and made stirrers for it from bits of bent coat-hanger wire ...... bend an open triangle about 6mm wide onto the end. This would stir anything to useable condition. (Major Caution: the thing at the end of the stirrer has to be perfectly symmetrical, otherwise the out of balance when whizzing round will cause the wire to bend, and fling paint/weathering-brew all over you and your surroundings. Lesson learned the hard way!!).

 

 

[Taigatrommel]

https://www.lincsproducts.co.uk/isopropanol-alcohol-5-litre-jerry-can-size-999-pure-154-p.asp

[Nearholmer]

Crikey!

 

MI5 are probably watching.

 

If you've used that neat, my guess is that you need to take more water with it.

[Jintynut]

wouldn't recommend washing up liquid as a wetting solution, car shampoo would be better no salt, for the more professional artist suppliers do supply wetting, water tension solutions.

 

Bert

[Nearholmer]

The more I think about it, the less I understand why it needs a wetting agent, but there is definitely something ‘soapy’ in the Tamiya stuff, and 03060 mentioned something to do a similar job in printing.

[Barry O]

Always used water with inks. You can get lots of different colours of ink. I use Windsor and Newton coloured inks (white,browns, greens, silver etc) and Rotring for black. Never had any problems when adding a very small amount of washing up liquid as an aid to "wetting". 

 

IPA can cause other problems..it does take some RTR lining etc off.

 

Baz

Edited February 22, 2020 by Barry O

[DavidB-AU]

Genuine India ink is lamp black (very fine soot) in water. It can be quite easily diluted with water but a little alcohol will help it penetrate wood. 

 

An alternative to ink for weathering wood is a black leather oil. This is some basswood I weathered with Raven Oil, about 10% in isopropyl alcohol. It's quite thin so you might need 2-3 applications to achieve the desired weathering. This had about 3 applications. One benefit is it's waterproof but will still take PVA glue.

 

 

It has quite a nice natural look.

 

 

Cheers

David

[JimFin]

On 12/02/2020 at 22:32, Taigatrommel said:

I'm trying to weather some timbers for harbour fendering/baulks, and to start with I followed advice from various sources, using india ink (Daler Rowney Khandahar) diluted in isopropyl alcohol. 

I am curious as to the benefit of this technique as with some of my Swiss buildings I have simply used woodstain from a DIY store. What is the advantage to india ink?

[St Enodoc]

I've used washes of various coloured drawing inks, including black, burnt sienna and white, for weathering although I don't know whether the black is genuine Indian Ink. I mix the ink with 99% IPA bought from a friendly pharmacist and have had no problems with it at all. I generally use a ratio of between 1 part ink/20 parts IPA to 1 part ink/50 parts IPA depending on the intensity of the weathering I want. As Baz says, the IPA can soften transfers, varnishes and paints so don't rub or brush too hard when applying the wash.

 

If you're buying the IPA off the shelf as rubbing alcohol or surgical spirit it is usually more dilute than 99% and will also probably have some castor oil in it, which might cause some of the problems described.