U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: After IKE and paper size

Re: After IKE and paper size




Hi Marek... Congratulations on using the time so productively... Clearly a sign of strong character... Your reducing the strength of glyoxal is also very interesting -- tho I wonder if that guarantees no "yellowing."???? For what it's worth, I found that if I rinsed the paper promptly after hardening it didn't yellow at all... at whatever the "regular" strength was, which I don't at this exact moment recall.

But while on the subject of paper, one other point... The masa sounds intriguing & in due course I expect to try it, but I found that with the heavier "expensive" papers, since I always vat size (ie, size by submerging in tray, not brushing), if one side is a wreck, the other side is extremely usable, and already well shrunk... Which does reduce cost of the paper by half -- maybe still not as cheap as the masa, but...

I do however, firmly cross out the "bad side," while recalling the frustration of Ethel Katz, my wonderful long-ago teacher in the children's class at the Art Students' League. She was a watercolorist in the then pathbreaking "wet technique," which she also taught us. (So I began in watercolor at a tender age.) She sometimes gave a print as gift to friend or colleague, and told about once finding her print framed on a wall with the crossed-out pencil-mark side exhibited. She exclaimed in horror, "Didn't you see it was crossed out?" "We thought that was part of the design," was the reply.

Of course to be ultra safe you could mount the reverse-side print on something else...

J.

On Thu, 25 Sep 2008, Marek Matusz wrote:

I sized a lot of paper and did some controlled experiments with glyoxal as hardener as it was what I had and wanted to use. I made a 3.5% gelatin solution and hardened it with increasing amount of glyoxal. Samples were placed on a glass plate and two days later soked in warm and then hot water. This way I could really deternie how much glyoxal is needed to crosslink the gelatin to where it would swell but not dissolve. It went throgh patches that dissoled easily to those hard as a rock, so I know I covered the concentrations needed.
In my experiments I determined that a solution of 2 packets of gelatin (14 grams), 400 cc of water needs 6 cc of 4% glyoxal. That is correct. I diluted gyloxal 1:10 and used 6 cc of this dilute solution. My old method was 12 cc of 40% glyoxal for 14 grams of gelatin. I am hoping that much lower concentration of hardener will eliminate some of the yellowing associated with glyoxal (not that it mattered to me that much as I soak next day after size to shrink paper and water soak always eliminated yellowing).
I was quite surprized that I used way to much glyoxal. Way too much that is actually needed to crossling gelatin. The ratio that I used came from the discussion on the list a few years back.
ANyways it was a good experiment and I had plenty of time on hand.
I also printed in the last two days to make up for "lost" time. I will actually try to post some my tricolor work demonstarting different palletes later tonight.
Happy to see that the list was quite busy.
Marek
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