Re: Help with what I believe is a hardening issue

gdimase@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> I have being reading this thread and seems to me that there is a major
> confusion.
> The purpose of hardening is to the gel not to the paper.
> The gel is going to carry the pigment colors meaning the image, obviously
> the gel is on top of the paper but it can be on top of anything.
> Does anyone disagree with me?

Hi Giovanni,
In my gum universe (which appears in many respects to be a parallel
universe to some other gum universes, but that's what makes the study of
gum so endlessly fascinating) the gel is on top of the paper, as you
say, but the gel isn't what the gum is hanging onto. If you looked at a
cross section of paper through a microscope, you would see fibers
sticking up off the surface of the paper. It is those fibers, which we
call "tooth," that the gum grabs onto and that keep it from floating off
the surface. If sizing is so thick or heavy that it clogs up the tooth,
then the gum coat will flake off the paper because there's nothing for
it to hang onto. Gum doesn't "stick" to sizing; it sticks to whatever
tooth it's got to hang onto in the substrate. My 2cents, and as I say,
this applies only to the gum universe I know,
Katharine
Received on Fri Nov 12 13:50:52 2004