From: Richard Sullivan (richsul@earthlink.net)
Date: 03/11/02-02:40:22 PM Z
Just talked to Stuart Melvin and as you know Stuart is one of the masters
of gum over platinum and did the View Camera magazine article on it about a
year ago and had the cover too.
Stu was beside himself over a discovery he made. At least we have not seen
a mention of this in print so we think it is his discovery. I asked him if
he was going to keep it a secret and he said no, that it will be part of
his workshops.
Stuart uses B+S powered gum mixed to a fairly thick solution. The magic
part he says is to add grain alcohol in a ratio of 2% to the gum solution
not including the dichromate. He says it coats extremely smooth and coats
very much like coating platinum emulsion and though a bit slow to start in
the development, it immensely improves the smoothness of development. This
is coming from someone I consider a master of the gum process and not prone
to a lot of foolishness. One noted gum printer sat next to me at APIS and
groaned quietly while Stuart made his presentation while showing a pile of
graphs. Stuart definitely does not fall into the "fancy borders" school of
alt photography that Frank Van Riper refers to in C. James book review in
the Washington Post.
BTW, Stuart has been using liquor store Everclear a drinkable (!) 190 proof
pure grain alcohol. This stuff is illegal in many states including
California but folks sit in parking lots in New Mexico drinking it with a
soda straw. But then we have one of the highest alcohol related death rates
in the US too.
Whether or not it works with Home Depot methyl alcohol remains to be seen
but I suspect it works just as well with that.
--Dick Sullivan
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