Peter Charles Fredrick (pete@fotem.demon.co.uk)
Thu, 15 Jul 1999 10:15:50 +0000
Dear Judy,
>>To make the paper more translucent it's waxed or oiled (just like Wm H.
Fox Talbot's "waxed paper negative!), so it prints in less than 1/3 the
time. My tests showed that waxing worked much better -- lasted longer, and
not sticky, That's heating the paper with a hot iron & quickly rubbing
with block of paraffin. (In the archives.) But others prefer the oil:
Peter Fredrick uses sunflower oil, I think someone else recently said
mineral oil.<<
Yes Katherine Thayer recommends the mineral oil, which we in the uk call liquid
paraffin I personally used this oil for a number of years but found it to
be very viscose and therefore slow working it is also slightly sticky.About
two years ago I looked around for an alternative and did a number of tests
on other oils, sunflower came out top for speed of application, trans
parency and cost.However there is one disadvantage if the oiled neg
is left out in a warm dry environment it tended to dry out over a number of
weeks ,this was solved by encapsulating the neg in a plastic sleeve used to
store documents.Recently I asked my School of Temperaprint students to
bring all there oiled negs into class twelve students obliged with
paper/negs created over the past two years there was no smell in other
words the oil had not gone rancid and there was no drying out, or any other
deterioration to the image
I have not tried your wax system not that I don't think it will work, after
all there is the historical president , but simply I have been unable to
locate the block of paraffin I know this sounds a bit feeble but there we
go I am a bit feeble these days ;--<<
Straying of topic slightly we need to relook at the way our electronic
imaging systems work the paper digital negative is only a low cost part of
a total electronic imaging system not like its predecessor the continuous
tone photographic negative which was the high cost end of a singular
imaging system. It is expendable and easily adaptable we could for
instance,if we so wished make a new set of printers each time we made a new
print quickly and economically. The knock on effect aestheticaly would be
considerable.
Pete
http://www.fotem.demon.co.uk/ To visit petes parlour gallery, there is now a
Guestbook !
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