U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: A few gum things

Re: A few gum things




On Tue, 8 Apr 2008, Ryuji Suzuki wrote:

The beauty of glut hardening is that the paper is ready to use
as soon as it dries,
That's the first suggestion I've heard that other hardeners aren't. In my experience (with hundreds of stduents) we generally used the paper ASAP the first day, meaning as soon as it dried, and some dandy prints were made that way -- first shot.

.... The best of all, glut is sold in a bottle and it is
inexpensive.

As is glyoxal... and formaldehyde too, for that matter.

In fact I don't know of any hardener in common use not in a bottle, tho I assume the alums are powders. Presumably the bottle and weight of the liquid add to the cost in shipping, but I doubt there's enough difference in the cost of the 3 hardeners we're discussing to be definitive, given the other factors.

J.