Gum - dichromate sizing and Cyanotypes. Your experiences?

About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Attachment view

From: Loris Medici (lorism@tnn.net)
Date: 10/31/03-06:19:48 AM Z


I tried to gum - dichromate sizing on a paper which works well with
cyanotypes; because I wanted a dichromate stained background and *extra
clarity/definition*? due to above-the-paper pigmentation caused by the
heavy sizing.

I sized the papers by using 5ml saturated (%10) Potassium Dichromate
solution + 10 ml Gum Arabic + 10 ml *regular tap water*? (the dichromate
solution was also made with regular tap water) and then exposed to UV
light for 5 minutes and washed the sized papers around 10-15minutes.

I double coated the gum-dichromate sized papers, everything was fine for
the first coat; it dried nicely but I lost half of the papers (2 of 4)
end of the second coat due to strange blue-violet staining which showed
up during drying.

And when I developed the exposed prints they cleared very quickly in the
first wash but they continously relesed prussian blue to water on the
subsequent washes. The prints never stopped releasing prussian blue to
the wash water - even if they started to fade (I gave them a short
hidrogen peroxide wash too)... What have I done wrong? Preparing
dichromate solution with tap water (cyanotype chemicals are with tap
water too)? Coating twice? ???

Can you please share your experiences with gum-dichromate sizing and
cyanotypes?

Regards,
Loris.


About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Attachment view

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : 11/05/03-09:22:18 AM Z CST