Re: tooth and no tooth

> Judy Seigel wrote:

>> I haven't heard of anyone who can print gum on a hard surface without a
>> substrate or some kind of roughing up. If I remember correctly, Galina
>> uses gelatin.
>>
>> ...... HOWEVER, I think the business about "tooth"
>> being needed on paper, needs some qualification: It's quite possible to
>> make a reasonable gum print on a smooth paper (I've used for instance a
>> Strathmore plate finish drawing paper).

Katharine Thayer wrote;

>.....very smooth papers still have considerable tooth, plenty
> enough for gum to hang onto.They may appear to our normal vision to have
> little tooth, but on microscopic inspection you would find all kinds of
> hills and valleys in the surface for the atoms to find and latch onto.
> What looks perfectly smooth to us will look like mountains and canyons
> to something as small as a molecule of gum. It's a matter of scale.

If you look at almost anything, animal or vegetable, even mineral, with a
powerful enough microscope you'll probably find irregularities, or holes
of some sort -- even in concrete. But the paper I speak of doesn't show
texture under a 10 power loupe, so could hardly be said to have "tooth."
The gum solution sinks into the fibers of the *absorbent* paper -- it wets
them and hardens there. It doesn't hang on tooth.

Judy
Received on Sat Nov 13 23:55:42 2004