paper shrinkage

Good morning!
     I was thinking about paper shrinkage yesterday...Judy had said that all
papers do not shrink the same (and shrunk differentially in subsequent
soakings). In the old literature they put it this way: that some papers
were not "suitable" because they were not dimensionally stable. I never
took the time, as Judy did, to shrink and compare measurement after
measurement of different papers to prove this point, as I found it to happen
in practice. I had such a b--ch of a time with aquarelle with registration,
and had to devise a whole new method of registering because of it. Even
then, the paper would not completely fit the neg, so I had to figure out
where the misregistration would be least noticeable. This was also with
using the hair dryer technique to dry it more so that it would shrink to
fit. I never experienced this before so chronically with other papers, and
with papers alongside aquarelle that I shrunk the same way, used the same
way, same amount of times, sized the same, etc.
     (I also remember someone--I think Judy--posting that you could "fudge"
it with a pencil, coloring in to mask the misregistration, and also that
more repeated layers would serve to hide the misregistration. So it's not a
lost cause when it happens, just requires more work.)
     However, when I was working with Artistico I did not see it shrink that
much in the first shrink, and thinking about aquapel (or whatever may be in
the new Artistico), maybe some *sizings* are more dimensionally stable as
Jack suggested...I have not had the registration nightmare so far with that
paper, and hopefully it will stay that way through multiple layers (I'm
crossing my fingers). Those of you paper makers like Tom Ferguson, maybe
you have opinions on this? Or is it something else, like the type of fibers,
or the tightness of the fiber?
Chris
Received on Sun May 9 11:09:47 2004