more gum

["Weber, Scott B" <sweber@mail.barry.edu>]

I have very little experience in gum printing and one of my students has decided to print gums. She bought the  gum "kit" from Bostick & Sullivan and followed the directions in Chris James book for glyoxal-gelatin coating to size the paper then used the 6ml gum, 6ml pot. dichrom (10%) with about 1/2 inch of watercolor pigment to sensitize. Starting with a digital neg chosen by exposing the color density range palette from PDN she arrived at a negative which is sort of orange. The resulting images are weak and the coating is very uneven. This student knows how to coat paper as she produced excellent prints in my class with cyano and VDB's. She is frustrated and I said I would try to help. From my description does it look like we are doing anything wrong? I know many of you are excellent gum printers maybe through your experience you might see something that she is doing wrong.

Thanks for your help,

Scott B. Weber
Associate Professor of Photography
Department of Fine Arts
Barry University
11300 NE 2nd Avenue
Miami Shores, Florida 33161
(305) 899 4922