Gallium Pencil

Adric made a Gallium pencil for me to try, at QueLab hackerspace in Albuquerque, on June 2nd, 2019:

Gallium pencil in a lead holder

Gallium is an element, 

number 31 on the Periodic Table.

Gallium is a metal that will melt in your hand (melting temperature above 85 degrees Fahrenheit). 

Gallium melts in your hand

(and is non-toxic)

Frozen gel pack

for carrying the gallium pencil

(might be overkill, but not in Phoenix)

Gallium looks like pencil graphite, so we thought it might be used to draw with, like silver point (which was popular in the Renaissance).   So we first coated some paper with Golden Silverpoint Drawing Ground, and then drew on the treated paper with the gallium pencil.

Adric drawing with the gallium pencil

on coated paper

It worked!

And the gallium pencil also drew on uncoated paper

We wondered if we could alter the image after it was drawn, with a heat gun, since that would melt the gallium.

Attempting to alter the gallium pencil drawing

with a heat gun

The heat gun did not do much to alter the drawing.  However, drawing on the heated paper produce some silvery lines.  Moreover, drawing with gallium made a similar noise to scratching a chalkboard and made more of that noise when the paper was heated.

The silvery lines

were added to the drawing

after the paper was warmed with a heat gun

To make the gallium lead, the size to fit in a lead holder, Adric filled a small plastic tube with liquid gallium.  Then he cut the plastic off, to extract the lead.

Making the gallium lead for a lead holder pencil,

by filling a small plastic tube with liquid gallium

When we first searched Google for "gallium pencil," we found only one hit with no information.  However Beals Science does give instructions online for making a gallium pencil.  Maybe we aren't as original as we thought we were, though that website did not make a gallium lead holder pencil, which seems more useful.

There did not seem to be any immediate advantage to drawing with a gallium pencil lead.  During our quick experiment we did not manage to alter the drawing much after the fact, with a heat gun.

However, the gallium did smear nicely, like a soft pencil, even if the lead were as hard as silverpoint.  And it would erase like a pencil.

Gallium destroying aluminium

Gallium does react with aluminium, and will eventually disintegrate the aluminium.  So earlier members were drawing on aluminium plates at QueLab, hoping to etch into the plates.  Those casual experiments did not work (perhaps because they were drawing on the hard aluminum surface).

Still, there might be a way to use gallium for printmaking. Maybe one could draw on an aluminum sheet, allow the interaction to etch the aluminium, and make intaglio prints with that process. Or perhaps not.  Would gallium work as a resist on copper or zinc?

UPDATE (Nov 25, 2019):

John Reger drrew the model with our gallium pencil at Argos Studio/Gallery in Santa Fe, on November 23, 2019.  It worked pretty well, though was prone to smearing:

On Golden's Silverpoint drarwing grounds

Directly on Bee paper

Update April 9, 2020 -- Adric sent me this YouTube about making gallium ink:

Gallium ink