[shroudie]

Orionblamblam, so your experiment, on “crappy paper” shows that ink travels in all directions by capillary action. Exactly! Duh! But for a superficial image on only the crown fibers of the outermost face sides of the thread, any colorant solution would have to travel in only one direction through a tightly twisted bundle of some 70 to 120 cellulose fibers. If it traveled in all directions, as it would (and left no traces within the thread) it would leave a residue on sides of the thread where there is no image. Macroscopic kitchen experiments do not explain microscopic results. Did you do a cross section of your paper to see that in fact there was no image between the outer faces. Thermal paper, like you used, is about 50 microns thick. Are you sure? Have you done microscopic analysis of the inner fibers of your piece of paper? Are there internal ink residues? And incidentally, we are talking about a woven piece of cloth not paper. On a cloth, the residue of colorants within the yarn and about the surfaces of the yarn would be far more pronounced.

Now evaporation concentration is another matter. And it will cause ink (or dye or stain or paint) particles to concentrate on the outer faces. But it does not eliminate telltale traces of capillary action in all directions. But since it is already proven that the image is contained within a carbohydrate layer coating the fibers, and is not any form of applied colorant, you are presenting silly arguments. And this fact that the image is a Melanoidins (amino-carbonyl, Maillard product) is well established in peer reviewed papers (see my previous posts).

[orionblamblam]

> f it traveled in all directions, as it would (and left no traces within the thread) it would leave a residue on sides of the thread where there is no image.

After 650 years? Are you so certain? Wow.

> But since it is already proven that the image is contained
within a carbohydrate layer coating the fibers...

You keep touting that like it's something special. So what if the image is *on* the fibers and not *in* them?

> And this fact that the image is a Melanoidins (amino-carbonyl, Maillard product) is well established in peer reviewed papers (see my previous posts).

I saw one (1) paper that *suggested* that.