Re: Where there's a will (was: Re: spots and fish eyes)

Christina Z. Anderson wrote:
>
> As hot as my faucet will deliver--not too hot to burn, just too hot to take
> a bath in. How scientific...

Close enough. ;-)

The reason I was asking is that when I was trying out Arches Platine for
gum printing, I found that while the unnevenness of the internal sizing
made the paper look weird and mottled when it was wet (in cool water),
the mottling disappeared when the paper dried, and didn't show in the
print. But if I treated the developing print with hot water (or with
ammonia) as I do once in a great while to speed up development in
selected areas of a print, prints on this paper responded to the
treatment very differently from most papers: instead of gently removing
some of the excess pigment density, the hot water or ammonia blasted a
hole right through the print and through the internal sizing as well;
the pigment went clear through and ended up on the back of the paper.
Needless to say, I didn't much care for this effect, and shipped the
paper back.

Platine is an oddball, with its starch sizing, and while the Fabriano
Uno is specified as being internally sized "with a specially formulated,
gelatin-free sizing" the other fabrianos are not so designated, at least
in the catalog I'm looking at, so it may be that this idea, that it
might be an interaction between the particular internal sizing and the
hot water, may not wash; I'd give it a 15% chance at most. But just
another thought to consider or discard.
kt
Received on Tue Dec 9 13:51:41 2003