Re: Negative Cleaning Help

Lisa Reddig wrote:
>
> I am doing some gums today. Something went wrong and I now have pieces of
> pigment/gum/dichromate on the emultion side of the negative. An original
> 4x5 B&W kodak trix negative. Never had anything like this before. How do I
> get it off??
>
>

Hi Lisa,
It sounds like your coating wasn't quite dry when you put the negative
on it, and some of the damp coating mix came off on the underside of the
negative where it touched. I don't know what these other guys are
talking about, paper sticking to negative; that's not what I'm reading
here, but it's possibly of course that I'm missing something. If I'm
right and it's just coating mixture, then it depends... If it's under a
fairly dense area of the negative, it should simply wash off in water,
just like the coating that was still on the paper would wash off at that
place. And even if it's under a less dense area, and therefore
hardened, the film may well be slick enough that the hardened gum won't
stick anyway. From my experiences printing on mylar it would be my guess
that it's harder to make hardened gum stick to film than to make it let
go; I've found that I usually have to use treated mylar, or treat it
myself, to get the hardened gum to stick through development. So my
guess would be that this should wash off in water.

I would experiment first with putting the negative in water and letting
it sit for a while; hopefully the stuff will dissolve right off. If not,
I'd dab very gently with a damp lintless cloth, and if that doesn't do
it, then I don't know. I've never had this happen with an original
negative, but I've done it a couple of times with digital negatives,
which is a different story. With a paper negative, it won't wash off,
and with a Pictorico negative, water ruins the negative. With a digital
negative it's easy to just print another one. Good luck, and I'll be
interested to know what happens.
Katharine Thayer
Received on Sat May 15 21:15:11 2004