I recently finished carving these two small seals, then carved the titles along with my name into the side of each stone. After cutting these side inscriptions I filled them with ink and wiped off the excess. And this is where different stones act differently. As you can see from the stone on the right, the inscription turned out as I intended it. The stone on the left, on the other hand, absorbed more ink into the stone and I couldn’t wipe off all the ink, leaving a dark stain around the characters. One stone was more porous than the other and, of course, we have no way to know if this is going to happen until after it’s done.