Re: report on glyoxal yellowing

> Ah, but Chris, you have admirably suceeded in repeating your yellow
> experience, but you have NOT proved the cause ! It could be just
> something in South Carolina... or you may have sodium carbonate in the
> wall board. To prove your thesis that it's caused by X, you have to
> produce a piece of non-X that doesn't yellow.
>
> Meanwhile, the suspense is excellent.
>
> J.

Nope, proved nothing to no one except that down here with my process and
Fabriano, the paper yellows. In MT with my process, and Rives BFK paper
doesn't yellow. Down here with my process and Fabriano, I get degrees of
yellowing in the different papers. That to me shows it is NOT **just** my
process, or SC, but another factor of the paper, when yellowing occurs. The
fact that all test samples showed this in all conditions proves that enough
to me.

I'll be back in MT in less than a year so I will then test Fabriano up there
with my same procedure (no rinsing and then I'll rinse a batch) to see if
this yellowing occurs. I am going to bet you five bucks I will get this
yellowing on Fabriano up there, too. So you may be getting five bucks in the
mail.

What it proves to me is that glyoxal is not a suitable hardener, and that is
enough.

Yesterday I emailed Don B offlist a comparison of gly hardened and glut
hardened paper printed with the same neg and time of a cyano. It is amazing
the difference. The cyano is sharp and navy and beautiful on glut, and dull
and paler on gly. Now, this can be due to allllll kinds of variables, but
what is hilarious is the fact that I didn't know this was the reason while I
was developing. I kept getting these dull prints, and I thought, ohmagosh,
did I coat thinly, not expose correctly etc....what was wrong? Luckily, I
had recorded in fine print on the edge of the papers which were gly and
which were glut sized, and all glys were dull and paler. Hey, I can email
the jpeg offlist to anyone who is interested, too.

Now, the problem is this: how to get a great hardener like glut to be a
home user product, given its problems of toxicity that Katharine, Gene, Ray,
and others question. If glut is no more toxic, though, than glyoxal, whose
toxicity has also been brought up on this list, why does Bostick and
Sullivan not bottle the 2.5% solution and sell it? Hey Dick if you are
reading??? Both have got to be better than formaldehyde.

And speaking of sizing: gesso was always gritty for me; hated it. Glut is
smooth as a baby's butt. Glyoxal is gritty, too.
Chris
Received on Sun Nov 14 07:44:03 2004