> Dave,
>
> Thanks for the Photogravure booklist! I just bought a copy of Kolb's
> book with the intention of giving Photogravure a try sometime within
> the next year. I would most interested to hear, either on or off-list
> what you think the problems are with Kolb's text.
>
> -greg schmitz
Greg and all...
When Marlene and I started to teach ourselves this complicated process,
we depended on Kolb's book. After MANY frustrating months we got good
advice from another practitioner and other, older texts (Cartwright,
Dennison, and of course, Sacilotto) We soon realized that when we
finally we consistently successful, the differences were many. Kolb talks
about using water at 70-80F for adhering (or something like that) which
of course is not appropriate. It should be at 50F.
The curing of 20 minutes is also unnecessary. We go immediately from the
squeegeeing of the tissue the copper to the hot water wash out. And we do
not pour 100% alcohol over the back. As for the density range, I
think that Kolb talks about .20-.40 for the highlight densities and that is
really too thin. It should be more like .40 and higher. The shadows should
be about 1.8 (1.7 - 1.9) and then he never mentions the density of blacks,
which should be somewhere around 2.0 or denser.
I hesitate to say Kolb is wrong, more like he has an excessive number of
steps.
I also think that his information about etching (range of baumes and times
in each bath) is just not universally applicable. Rather, each practitioner
has to more or less figure it out for themselves. Also, we could never
get his recipe for making ferric (ferrous?) hydroxide to work.
I could send (orFAX) and Outline of our steps to anyone who sends me
thier number or Snail address. I hope it helps
Dave Morrish
Department of Visual Arts
Sir Wilfred Grenfell College
Corner Brook, Newfoundland
Canada A2H 6P9