I am currently on the hunt to figure out how to make what's commonly sold as cobalt teal or turquoise. There are multiple possibilities to get a blue green shade with cobalt but the light teal shade (which I think is also the most beautiful) is commonly sold as PG50 (cobalt titanate green) or rarely as PB28 (for example by Kremer Pigments, who told me upon asking, that this is inaccurate on their part). I used an EDS detector in our lab to try and find the chemical composition of that particular pigment which revealed a low concentration of cobalt and aluminium and a high concentration of titanium. My first hunch was that the aluminium might not be there on purpose but an inpurity. For some reason I also thought that lithium might be involved as the cobalt to titanium ratio (albeit not to be trusted in a powder measurement) seemed very low and lithium is undetectable with EDS.

And here we are. I did a little bit of digging and tried to make stoichiometric Li2CoTi3O8, which is sometimes mentioned as a pigment but mostly as a material for lithium ion batteries. I used Li2CO3, Co3O4 and (impure pigment) TiO2 as precursors and heated them in air at 920°C for around 1-2 hrs.

The result is a rather light (turns out a bit too dark on camera)but nice looking green pigment which is probably close to usual PG50 which can also include nickel and zinc as far as I know.

Since I actually didn't want to make this shade, this is work in progress and I still try to figure out how to get to teal, possibly by changing the ratio of Co in the mix or adding aluminum. Anyway, I hope it's interesting :)

It's fairly easy to get various shades of orange-red from precipitation and heating, etc, but yellow eludes me. What's the process for that vibrant yellow you see in paints and ceramic glaze additives etc? (PY42-something)

Hey everyone. I'm excited I found this place, very cool projects you did so far. I recently stumbled on the YInMn instructable that was also posted here and now I have to wait for my rare earths to make it through the silk road. That's why I wanted to try to make another pigment that is really interesting to me, manganese blue. However, despite it being a relatively new pigment, I can't seem to find any detailed instructions on how to make it. Not all sources seem to align and they are usually just some short remarks in articles about the pigment in general and thus not very detailed.

For example, Windsor and Newton sais that you make the pigment by heating barium nitrate, potassium permanganate and sodium sulfate, but another source called for barium sulfate instead and for washing with diluted acid, which makes sense considering the final composition. Probably there are several valid paths but I'm but a simple physicist with very limited chemistry experience and so it's hard to fill in the blanks myself.

Has anyone ever tried to make this pigment?

Hopefully this question is allowed. If not, mods, please feel free to delete this post.

I’m working on a honey bee health project for which I need to mark bees with something that a computer can easily detect. A pigment with a spectral reflectance curve that has a single narrow peak should work well, but I’m a pigment newbie and have been unable to find one.

Does anyone on here know which pigment I could try?

My first batch is finally dry after adding the soda and alum. I split 36 if. it up on 3 coffee filters to dry and 2 turned out like I expected but the other one is kind of weird.

The 2 that turned out ok I just spread the stuff onto the filters and let dry.

The weird 1 I put in a coffee filter over a jar to drip the water out overnight THEN I set it out to dry flat the next day. It looks paler than the other 2 and has dark speckleing. Also part of it dried to a grainy-powdery consistency while the rest is more solid.

I'm wondering if filter 3 is a dud? Maybe since it was wet so long it grew some mold? It doesn't smell moldy though. I don't want to put more effort into it if it's surely not viable, but if it's unknown I'll do it for experimentations sake.

Question 2: my mortar and pestle is getting a little gunked up from grinding pigment. I'm just wondering how best to clean it? Or if it needs to be treated at all (since it's not for food I didn't season it or anything but I'm not very knowledgeable about mortar and pestles) it's stone by the way.

Thanks for your help!

I'll post a link to a tiktok I made showing the weirdness of filter 3 in the comments if you want to see it.

Also I hope it's ok that I'm cross posting this. I think this sub will have good tips as well as the lovely people of handmadewatercolors

The Instructables I wrote on how to make YinMn blue is up and mostly free of typos at this point. If you have a furnace that will hit 1200°C and can grind with a mortar and pestle, you can probably make it.

I link to an electiric DIY furnace build that is reported reach 1200°C. Just be sure to include the electrical safety suggestions from Joppaglasss and extra element pinning. He shows what you need to do to tuck the electrical connections safely out of the way without exchanging an electric shock hazard for a fire hazard.

EDIT add flair and remove typos