These edited highlights are of particular interest to me, I am in no way
questioning Christopher's technique which sounds great, and I am sure
works very efficiently.
>have been most satisfied with the incredibly tight registration,In my
humble experience what appears to be of paramount import is my initial
shrinking of the paper. I place the paper in a deep tray of hot water (hot
as possible)for a minimum of thirty minutes<
>The next step, of course, is sizing & hard sizing the paper. <
>The paper at this point is remarkably rigid<
>The rationale behind this is rather obvious. The principle papers we are
using are typically 100% cotton, like my king size cotton bed sheets which
if washed in extremely hot water and dried with heat will end up queen size
(shrunk in all directions). The heavy pre-shrinking(certainly not a new
idea) I utilise allows me to consistently print large images with
meticulously accurate registration using simple 2 pin registration.<
His point about pre-shrinking I think ia very apposite, we are after all
dealing with
cotton, we call it paper but it is in fact cotton, the same as our sheets ,
shirts and
blouses [see how politically correct I have become, I wonder why ?].
Cotton is a strong resilient fabric I have shirts that have been laundered
hundreds of times and they haven't changed size during the whole period of
this harsh ware and tear, in this respect Christopher methods seem quite
gentle in comparison.
So I decided to do another simple test to gain further information,
[ can I hear muttering from Twickenham]
What happens if a piece of rag paper is submitted to a soaking and drying
regime over and over again in cold water how will it change ?
Well this is what happened to a sheet of Fabriano Artistico fina 200gms,
which was given this treatment
The sheet of paper was 9.50inches long by 4.00inches wide, a line was drawn
at the top, in the middle, and at the bottom, with a pencil.
This paper is cut in two, and one piece is left as a control
In the first test
the second piece of paper was soaked in cold water for 10 mins and dried
with a hair dryer
on taking out of the water it had shrunk approx 1/16 inch, on drying it had
shrunk a further 1/16 inch making the shrinkage 1/ 8 inch in all
In the second test
the process was repeated and there was no change in size
In the third test
the process was repeated this time there was slightly
more shrinkage
making the total shrinkage a fat 1/8 inch
In the fourth test there was no change, in size
I did six more tests and there were no further changes in size
the paper had for all practical purposes stabilised.
This would tie in with Christopher's first baking and two further sizing
stages,
making three wet and dry stages, then stabilisation took place.
It would be great if somebody else could also try out this simple test,
although it is a bit time consuming. What is interesting is that no time
consuming stretching procedures were used yet stabilisation was achieved.
I hope this info may be of use
pete
To get the best you must test :-)