Re: drying racks?
judy,
your setup sounds great and practical. unfortunately i have neither
space for a cabinet, nor jogs in the wall. but, fortunately, my bathroom
is reasonably light-tight, so i can live without a light-protected
drying area for now.
of course i'm not taking baths while coated papers dangling abobe my
head ... although i occasionally shower next to half-dry processed gum
prints.... i just don't feel like checking the bathtub for dichromate
drops every time. also i am an impatient and also sloppy worker. when
i'm coating papers, i want to get through the ten or so papers as
quickly as possible. waiting for five minutes after each before hanging
it, ruines my nerves: it's too much to take off the gloves and leave the
room and too long not to. so i tend to hang them too early and the
suffer from drops.
for coating i use a normal brush first, then another (hake, foam or so)
for smoothing. just yesterday i got a shiny new 60mm synthetic brush, i
can't wait to use it. i don't really like foam brushes for gum emulsion,
i like it for silver processes though.
washing the frames - of course i didn't mean washing donut holes... but
the fly screen in the frames could probably get some emulsion on it from
drops (if there are any), so i'd like to wash or rinse them every now
and then. but will just use what i have for now and switch to frameless
wire screens or something like that, whenever one of these things
crosses my way.
i think i found a solution for most of my problems, which is a big table
for coating and drying. since most people use some kind of horizontal
drying, i can put hanging papers to rest with a good conscience.
Judy Seigel schrieb:
On Tue, 11 Aug 2009, phritz phantom wrote:
so, i'm in the process of building drying racks for, well... drying,
but especially for drying coated emulsions and sensitized tissue. the
classic workflow would be to coat, leave flat for some time, then
hang to dry- i guess. that's what i've been doing until now. but i
don't want to do the hanging anymore, because the only place to hang
them is above my bathtub and i don't feel comfortable with that
anymore. also horizontal drying is beneficial sometimes.
Phritz:
What are you using to coat with? In my experience, it's not necessary
to have drips... in fact, if you've coated so fluidly that there are
drips, you risk, not just the drips onto self in the bath, and your
priceless Persian carpet, but channels, streaks, uneven routes through
the course of your print where a streak has run down.
For what it's worth I describe the set up I've used these many years:
In a corner of the studio (my "light room") I have a supply cabinet
about 40 inches wide... that's backed up against a jog in the wall to
make a space about 40 by 36 or 40 inches (anyway bigger than the
largest paper I use) thus shrouded on 3 sides, and I've got a black
plastic light-proof curtain that pulls across the 4th side.
Inside this space, that is, on the back of the cabinet and the wall
facing it, I have wood strips that hold 5 screens from a disused print
washer, one over the other, maybe 6 inches of vertical space between
them. (Screens in ANY size to fit your space can be ordered at your
local hardware store... get the-- oops, I'm blanking on the screening
material, but it's somewhere in Post-Factory, and/or someone should
know... Not the ancient kind of window screen, in aluminum or other
metal, but the "modern" kind in some kind of synthetic or plastic).
Just inside the black "curtain," I have a support (a low chest of
drawers in fact, doubles as extra storage space) for a small fan. (We
use these little fans all over the house, they cost about $10 apiece,
have a very small footprint and energy bite and ... we only had the AC
on TWICE so far this summer !) This fan will dry the paper, depending
of course on thickness & ambient temp. & humidity in 15 minutes to a
half hour.
The double plug on the wall also allows a safelight for inspection(s),
which I find very handy, though frankly IME if it comes to that, these
"alt" coatings can all take a short exposure to normal room light. (I
have an idea that ambient humidity, and time since coating, are more
significant variables than exposure to ambient light... tho for extra
credit maybe someone wants to test that?)
In any event, do NOT try to coat by "safelight." A yellow emulsion (as
they tend to be) cannot be seen or judged by "safelight," tho it never
ceases to amaze me how many folks do manage to coat credibly by
safelight -- also how many "how to" books and essays call for it. (I
coat by whatever my room light is at the time, in fact next to my
north-facing "picture windows." In school we coated under
fluorescents, which for some reason are also considered a no-no. No
problems -- just get the wet paper into the dark ASAP.
I coat gum with a soft foam brush, smoothed with hakie. But cyano,
VDB, etc., always coated very nicely with just the foam. Don't mix
processes in yr applicator, is my experience... or anyway my practice.
They're cheap enough to have one for each & it really wastes water
trying to wash them clean enough to remove all traces of the previous.
(Tho maybe folks living in the great outdoors haven't had 3 hikes in
their water rate this year?)
It's not clear to me, Phritz, why you had to wash "frames" -- I coat
on a plastic sheet, or something else wipe-able, or brown paper, or
whatever... though as a rule I don't anyway coat edge to edge, leaving
a margin for handling (even 1/2 inch at one end works & can be trimmed
off later if need be)... etc. etc.
Judy
so i've built some drying frames out of fly screens and canvas
frames. i will stack those, put some kind of pan beneath it to
collect possible drops and a fan in front of it. now i started
thinking, that cleaning those frames could be a nuisance, so i will
protect them with a layer of old newspaper (anything sticky on the
backside should just wash off during processing) or so ... or switch
to wire screens if i can find them.
what i've been wondering these days is, how everyone else is handling
the coated papers? maybe there is an ingenious simple solution
(hopefully), i didn't think of..
regards,
phritz
|