U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: Old carbon tissue

Re: Old carbon tissue



Title: Re: Old carbon tissue

Carbon tissue will definitely go bad with age. How long depends on pigment, gelatin and storage. It is best stored frozen.

You can tear off a small piece and put it in hot water to see if the tissue has gone bad. If it is good, the gelatin should melt and the pigment should ooze out. If the gelatin has hardened, it will not melt and nothing can save it.

Sandy King


At 5:57 PM +0000 7/5/07, Marek Matusz wrote:
Can somebody give me some advice.
I was trying to print carbon prints using B&S tissue. I have made carbon prints before, but I am not an experienced printer, as a matter of fact I am totally intimidated by the process.  Here is what my problem was yesterday. I exposed, soaked the tissue and mated it to the final support. The tissue and the suppot were very hard to separate. (i need to mention this is a single transfer process, from tissue to the final support). AT 105F and 10 min soak I could not get them apart. That was one ruined print. I then tried 110 and 120F soak and could not get the gelatine to soften to get a nice separation of the tissue. On top of that the development was very slow and I kep raising water temperature for development as well. I kept cutting exposue  as I was getting all hardened gelatine and almost no image. I ended with 1 min BL exposure time (this is a very short exposure), but did not end up with a decent image. AT that point I ran out of sensitised tissue and decided to quit for the day. ANy suggestions? DOes carbon tissue go bad on storage and how would I recognise it?
Marek M


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