Re: Printing on Al - my experience
Hi Loris,
I will be happy to send you jpgs of some prints off list to you.
Please let me know what your system can accept without inconvenience.
Rajul
On 9-Jul-09, at 11:36 PM, Loris Medici wrote:
Rajul, thanks much! A victory for persistance that is - isn't it?
We want
(to see) samples, we want samples! ;) (Seeing other's work here always
motivates and/or inspires me.)
Jacek, IME gum will not hold/cling onto plain acrylic gesso
(whatever brand
and/or marketing ploy). You need to make it more toothy/porous by
adding
extra calcium carbonate and/or pumice powder and/or sand flour (as
Rajul
does) ect. I was able to print on Al with calcium carbonate added
gesso; it
worked well.
BTW, I'm leaving the idea of gum on Al in favor of casein on Al
since it
seems to hold very well to acrylic gesso sized "paper" surface (I
couldn't
manage this with gum)... I'm in the middle of calibrating casein (a
slow
process since I'm in the Princes' Islands in Istanbul now and my
actual
home/lab is 12 nautical miles away!), as soon as I'm confident I
will try it
on wood and Al...
Regards,
Loris.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jacek Gonsalves [mailto:jacek@jagnight.com]
Sent: Friday, July 10, 2009 8:04 AM
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Subject: Re: Printing on Al - my experience
Hi Rajul,
Thanks very much for all the information!
Though wouldn't just the ground of Acylic gesso give you the tooth
it would
need to apply coats of whatever alternative process your using?
Btw what is your consistency,/mixture of your 30ml Gum Arabic to
water?
Cheers
Jacek
Quoting Rajul <eyeear@shaw.ca>:
I was able to get good prints on Al by the method I describe below.
Although I continue to fine-tune the procedure, the set of prints I
have are happy outcomes - flaws and all. I am thankful that gum
arabic
served to increase the viscosity sufficiently to keep the sand flour
particles in suspension through the coating steps.
1. CLEANING PLATES:
Clean plates w soapy water (tear drop test for cleanliness).
Clean 3x w 99% isopropyl alcohol.
Mask borders if desired w painters' tape or tackier tape.
2. GROUND PREPARATION:
30 ml of 14 Baume Gum Arabic
60 ml water
Add acrylic gesso (I used Stevenson's) to desired opacity
10 g Sieved Sand Flour
Pot. Dichromate powder equivalent to the concentration used to
get
shadows to print
(I found 2% more than enough)
3. APPLICATION OF GROUND:
a. Use a dampened, squeezed out roller
b. Pour an aliquot of the stirred ground on to plate and apply it
uniformly w roller
IMPT: helps to have roller barely charged. Hold it in a
sandwich bag while c and
d (below) are carried out to prevent it from drying
c. dry coat w hair dryer set on hot
d. UV for 1 min to harden entire coat
e. Turn plate 90 degrees and repeat b-d till ground is of desired
thickness.
4. GELATIN SIZE:
4% gelatin hardened w HCHO and containing ever clear is
applied on
3 consecutive days (allowing gelatin to dry
for 24 hours between
each application).
5. APPLICATION OF GUM EMULSIONS:
- Use a 10% amm. dichromate stock for mixing w gum and water
color pigment
- It HELPS to dampen plate w a wetted, hand-wrung towel before
brushing on
emulsion with a dampened, flicked, foam brush to get streak-free
spreads.
- dry coat w an overhead fan.
- If, during development of an exposed gum layer bubbles form
between
the
ground and the Al surface, REJECT the print: the dried bubbles
prevent
close contact between the negative and the printing surface during
subsequent
gum passes. Rate of bubble formation was 1 in 24 plates in my hands.
6. CYANO PASSES:
Can be done on top of gum. This requires long exposures (~1 hour in
the
shade on a sunny summer day).
- If there was any balling of the gelatin when the gum emulsion was
applied
(resulting in raised dots that may be colored or white), the
cyano
emulsion will clear them. In some prints, I found these dots to
be
a windfall!
I hope the above persuades more gummists to take on Al. Questions or
comments are welcome.
Rajul
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