2d ago

I tried to re-ink an old ribbon

I was interested in making my own ink so I can have any colour I want.
I dissolved some oil paint in machine oil, in my first tries I used universal machine oil but it was too thick, so I tried sewing machine oil that was much thinner. That worked much better but it was still a bit too thick so I was having some trouble "making it run" along the ribbon, so I used lighter fluid as a thinner. It worked great.
I eyeballed everything so I can't give proportions of the ingredients, in a future more serious attempt I plan to take some measurements.

It's been a month and still hasn't dried on the ribbon and types well.

Down sides:
I still haven't found a good method for putting the ink on the ribbon, I put a pair of gloves and use my fingers so it gets a bit messy and it is slow.
The other down side was that didn't take into account that there was old ink on the ribbon that darkened my brown ink so much that looks mostly black.

Oil paint
Thin machine oil
Lighter fluid

6 comments

This ia the kind of post I'm missing most after leaving reddit!
THANK YOU!

I just scanned this from "inks for the minor printing processes and specialised applications" by E. A. Apps if it's helpful. https://archive.org/details/typewriter-inks
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any PDF copies of it anywhere.
- This is very interesting, I did not consider heating the oil. That way I may not need to use a thinning agent.

Very interesting, thx for sharing, & I'm glad that you succeeded.
To remove the 'ribbon' from the typewriter equation, I've switched to a... thermal typewriter. It's obviously not the same type of machine at all but it does the trick and somehow it's still ok to use. Huge bonus: it's almost dead silent, something my spouse appreciate a lot. No idea why 8)
- Only issue is that thermal prints fade over time.
  
  Has not yet happened but since I use it for drafting it would not be an issue for me.