Richard Sullivan (richsul@earthlink.net)
Fri, 19 Feb 1999 10:14:28 -0700
The major difficulty with Woodbury is the huge presses that were necessary. A
swollen exposed dichromated relief was pressed into a piece of lead by a huge
press. Yes, the gelatin will impress into the lead. The processes main claim to
fame was its beauty and the fact that one could pull a dozen or more masters
from the gel. These were made of lead and were soldered up into grids. Warm
pigmented gelatin was poured onto the plate and light pressure applied until
the gel set. Where the gel was deeper more pigment was applied, thus an image
was formed. The small individual images were cut apart. One of the main uses
was for tipped in images in books. I've never seen a large, say greater than
5x7 Woodbury.
I played around a decade or so ago and like most people had no luck. The big
problem is getting the 3 tons or so per square inch of pressure. If I were to
attack the problem again I'd explore in from a different angle. In principle
you need to make a relief of an image. Anyone who has worked with dichromated
gum or gelatin has seen this. My research led me to UV curing resins. I
consulted with some material science folks and found out that the main problem
with developing UV curing resins is that they have a tendency to shrink
unevenly according to how much light they receive. In other words, exactly what
we ned.
Here's the plan:
* Find a material that dries hard but shrinks under UV.
* Make a relief.
* Cast it in resin to get one or more positives.
* Print the relief in pigmented gelatin.
There might be some material science type luring that could point out this
material if it exists.
--Dick Sullivan
At 02:59 PM 2/19/99 +0200, you wrote:
>
> Hey Richard,
> Not sure where to find Woodbury-type info on the web but maybe use
> "photoglypty" as a key word as well.
> Two books which refer to Woodbury and his inventions are A History and
> Handbook of Photography by Gaston Tissandier and The Keepers of Light by
> William Crawford.
> If you are unable to find these titles (the first one is from 1878 but
> was reprinted in 1973 and the second is still tmk available) drop me a line
> and I'd be happy to xerox the chapters you are looking for.
> Joel Lederer- Tel Aviv
>
> Richard Lahrson wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I remember reading about the Woodbury process. Anyone know of more
>> information about it on the web? This process was actually a graphic arts
>> process that printed without the familiar half-tone dots. If I recall
>> it used gelatin and a hugh amount of pressure from a gigantic press and
>> is probably closely related to the carbon process in regards to the
>> physical-chemical reactions.
>>
>> Rich Lahrson
>> tripspud@hooked.net
>
>
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