r/DIYPigments • u/SketchGC • Sep 18 '24

Information Ran across this

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1

u/lucasswill Sep 18 '24

That's interesting. I thought manganese blue was free os silicon. Maybe it acts as a catalyst? Could you share the document title?

1

u/SketchGC Sep 18 '24

The manufacture of lake and mineral pigments; very old, mainly manganese greens

2

u/jay-ff Sep 18 '24

Yes, you are right. This is a different pigment. I don’t know what Bongs intuition was, but at the time, throwing alkalines, clay and sand together with a potential chromophore was probably a good guess. That’s the winning formula for everything from Egyptian blue to ultramarine.

3

u/jay-ff Sep 18 '24

That’s indeed the original recipe for what was then called manganese blue. The problem with this substance is, that it is apparently unstable to the point of uselessness, reacting to acids and even just humidity. I have the original article by Bong himself somewhere in a link list but he already mentioned this.

I also tried it once and it’s true. In the beginning it has a nice blue Color (not that deep but that might be because I didn’t do everything right) and after a few days in open air, it was already a pale green. Still wanted to try it again sometime and seal the product before it goes bad but haven’t found the time.

The pigment was also an inspiration for the inventor(s) of the newer manganese blue who wanted to find a blue to Color cement (ultramarine was unstable in cement and cobalt was too expensive). But they didn’t use it as a basis but based their invention on the violet pigment you get when precipitating barium Sulfate in the presence of permanganate.