Another random question: ink

[hopewrites]

I'm with Alchemist, eating dentists doesn't sound like the best thing for your teeth. It is my opinion that ink, like salsa, increases in nastyness the more one eats it. I prefer blue ink to black, its tang is sharper and more metallic. I don't like red, it tastes violent. Purple has more of a dusky flavor. Yellow is vile and lingers for days like an aftertaste you can't forget.

Different papers taste different too but they were more subtle and didn't leave as lasting an impression in my mind.

[TheEndIsNigh]

Found this :-

http://www.pendemonium.com/ink_facts.htm

And I thought there was Stephens or Quink.

If memory serves, and it's getting thin nowadays, the ink I tasted in my younger days, (cheap school ink on the fingers etc.) tasted a bit like blood. I assume this has something to do with the iron content although given the extensive list in the link above there will as many tastes as there are inks.

Chewing newspaper (dried ink) :- to me the taste is dominated by the paper rather than the ink/newsprint.

[Bowler1]

I am one of those people who liked ink, as a kid I went through an ink phase. This was the 70's and I have not repeated the phase since so if the formula has changed I can't help you.

Metalic, sort of like a blood taste but thicker and stronger. Not very pleasant in taste but not all that bad. Can feel slimy if you get a big mouthful, especially with ball point pens which have very thick ink. You get great reactions when you smile, well when your 7 you do anyway.

It was a kiddy phase this ink, one I don't plan to repeat.

[ctg]

I love to read all confessions. You lot are so weird and I love that. LOL. Back in the days when I used to ink blueprints I also had to taste ink but I never developed a habit to eat it regularly and I certainly didn't think about eating dentists. What I would say about ink is that it varies on taste, some are milder than others, but they all taste metallic, poisonous and mostly unpleasant ... and also ink never tastes like chicken.

[Hex]

I agree, ctg. It's fantastic to find out what people got up to. And thank you very much for the information. I'd like to stay away from blood or I'll be verging on vampire (*) territory. Metallic and poisonous is great.

('she sat up, spitting out a mouthful of ink. What astonished her more than the fall, more than the capture itself, was that the ink tasted nothing at all like chicken.')

(*) The unwritten Gilderoy Lockhart book, 'Verging on Vampires'.

[Abernovo]

I've accidentally tasted the ink from an old-fashioned printer cartridge (the messy ones that actually had really liquid ink in them and gets all over your hands). Metallic, sticky and I couldn't get rid of the taste for several minutes. Not nice.

I think I get what Mouse meant about tasting poisonous, as well. I had a reaction to a medicine some years back and had the same sort of metallic taste in my mouth for a couple of days.

[chrispenycate]

We're not talking about eating entire dentists here, just getting a taste. When they start prodding around in the back of your mouth it can trigger a gag reflex (at least, that's what I'm claiming, not mere frustration at being rendered incommunicado and talked at), and you bite through the latex glove (which doesn't taste of chicken) and into the underlying finger (which, I suppose, tastes a bit like raw chicken). You are then expected to "rinse and spit", rather than finishing the meal – basically a good plan, as cannibalism is an excellent disease vector for things like mad cow disease (spongiform encephalopathic dentistry prions, anyone?)

I remember when, as a child, I had my little printing press with its type, and the plate you inked so the rollers could carry it to the actual box of letters (a delightfully messy enterprise). The ink was about the consistency of tomato ketchup, smelt of linseed oil, tasted like paint, and took a considerable time to dry, which involved each and every copy being hung by a clothes peg from a string as it came off the press. I suspect (although I can't actually remember) that white spirit or turpentine was used to dilute and clean. Vinyl pigments should have no flavour at all (= biologically inactive), but they want the pages to be dry fast, practically instantaneously on leaving the rollers, so the solvent will be highly volatile, and it's this that gives the characteristic smell of fresh newsprint, and doubtless the flavour, too, although plasticisers might be important spices. Now, I know what trike (trichlorethelene) tastes like, as I used to apply a solution of PIB (polyisobutelene) in it to loudspeaker surrounds:- sharp, and unpleasant but not particularly metallic or sanguin. But I have never tried swigging back ether (which would seem a bad choice, anyway, due to its inflammability, but is on the list of solvents used in printing ink) or any of the long chain alcohols (ethanol, though…), and when we get to things like methoxypropanol acetate, my alchemical knowledge waves a white flag (come back Firmeniche, {nearly} all is forgiven).

[mosaix]

Yes, I seem to remember metallic as well. Or maybe that was the taste of the nib?

At one time, maybe not any more, newspaper ink has a high grease content. If you suffered from your windscreen wipers screeching across your car windscreen then a quick wipe over with some scrunched up newspaper put a transparent lubricating film on the screen - problem solved.

[Mouse]

Dentists taste of latex, cloves and other nastiness.

Please note, I have never eaten Dentist.

[hopewrites]

I had a hygienist who's gloves tasted of grape. Weirded us both out that I couldn't keep my tongue out of her way.

[Finnien]

I have a question - is it more important to accurately relate the taste of ink, or to evoke a particular sense? Modern ink could be tasteless or have a faint tang of copper (for example), but would the more experienced writers here consider declaring it to taste of petroleum and rubber and asphalt with a metallic aftertaste that reminds you of licking flagpoles as a kid? Right now, after working on papers all week, I suspect ink would taste salty and oily, like a mix of blood and tears and the grease of the machinery that is grinding me down in my desperate attempt to get through the week. Should the setting and tone influence the taste, so long as it remains within the realm of believability, or is absolute factual accuracy of primary importance?

[Mouse]

Is licking flagpoles a euphemism?! Eek!

[springs]

Originally Posted by hopewrites

I had a hygienist who's gloves tasted of grape. Weirded us both out that I couldn't keep my tongue out of her way.

I am crying with laughter at that image, Hope.

[James Coote]

I'm kinda disappointed. I imagined ink would taste like what a freshly printed newspaper or football program would; acrid and repugnant

Then again, as chrispenycate says, that's probably the chemicals used to treat the paper that I smell, rather than ink.

[Vertigo]

I think you need to be a little careful. There are many different kinds of ink that are, I believe, totally unrelated.

As someone said above I thihnk print presses use acrylic based ink; very thick and sludgy. No idea what that would taste like.

Ink jet printers use, I believe, the most expensive liquid buyable on the high street (more expensive than the most expensive perfumes); almost certainly a totally different composition designed for it's 'jetting' qualities, rapid absorbtion and drying. I've no idea what that would taste like and it's way too expensive to sample .

I've no idea what pen inks are made of but I do have extensive experience of dipping pens in ink wells in my (early) school years. Also dipping wads of blotting paper in ink wells and then flicking them across the room at your enemy of the moment . The consequence was permanently inky fingers which at that tender age often resulted in visibly inky teeth, mouth, clothes, you name it. Distinctly mettalic and, I would agree with an earlier poster, reminiscent of blood.

Classrooms have never been the same since the invention of biros (and adoption of biros, I wasn't allowed to use them in school until possibly sixth form). Sad eh?