U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: The Fresson/Arvel Process

Re: The Fresson/Arvel Process

Title: Re: The Fresson/Arvel Process
This is very interesting Marek. Thanks for sharing!

I would like to try this tomorrow but, what exactly you mean by “Chlorox”? Is it a specific trademarked product or just a short name for ordinary household bleach? (Such as using “Kleenex “for paper towels – in Turkish, we use “Selpak” for the same instead of longer “kagit mendil”...)

Thanks in advance,
Loris.


On 11/27/07 11:52 PM, "Marek Matusz" <marekmatusz@hotmail.com> wrote:

Very interesting thread. I was in the Big Bend NP hiking and taking pictures, happy without a computer or cel phone for a few days. I only got to read some of the emails now.
Here is my comment from the practical standpoint of a gum printer. My one coat gum prints have eveloved to a practice that gives maximum darks and long (relative) tonal range of the final print (not to be confused with long negative density range). Some of my prints were included in the travelling portfolio last time around.
Here is a description of my pratice.
Coat the paper with gelatine / harden it.
FOr the gum layer I prefer highly pigmented carbon black.
Use longer exposure (3 to 5 times normal exposures). I really have not tried to push it even further.
Soak in water to remove dichromate.
Develop in a weak chlorox solution. My dilution is about 20 cc/liter of water. Could be as little as 10cc if I want slow action or as much as 40 to 50. Once the print starts bleeding the pigment I place it in water and watch for a few minutes following the development. If the development is slow, dip back in chlorox for a few minutes. The reason for moving it back and forth is that the action of chlorox continues for a few minutes and it is easy to just wash the gum layer completely.
Actually I use this method a lot for my tricolor gum prints as well.
 
How close is that to direct carbon? I call it gum, but it has all the ingredients mentioned in this discussion, geletine, gum, chlorox (or Javelle water version).

Marek