Re: Boiling gelatin

Katharine,

Feel free to post the pic.

That paper didn't speckle, it spotched. That saga was where the hot water
shrinking bath wreaked havoc with the manufacturer paper sizing and left
huge spots and streaks. In one print there was a stripe right down the
center of the image, looking like the edge of water on the seashore. Where
the sizing was melted away, the pigment layers grabbed and printed darker.
I kept printing the print, and I save it for a teaching visual. I got that
on Arches really badly, and that coupled with brown spots is why I will
never use Arches for gum.

I have gotten the speckling (I'm talking teeny pinpoint specks very visible
in the highlights, like the speckles on a robin's egg, or like blackheads
(magenta heads) on a person's face) on Rives BFK with glyoxal sizing, no
boiled gelatin, in the past, **all** the time, and usually on the third
layer. So at a certain point the sizing breaks down and the pigment sinks
into the top little paper fibers.

Since quitting using glyoxal and Rives BFK I don't have speckling. I have
not gone back to BFK with a glut hardened size to compare.

However, you may be right that the shrink bath water temp plays a part in
this, melting away manufacturer sizing.
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Katharine Thayer" <kthayer@pacifier.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2005 4:34 PM
Subject: Re: Boiling gelatin

> You all know how I am when I get curious about something, so I went
> looking for the discussion around this. I found it in December 2003, and
> I didn't read the whole thread, but I was able to determine that the
> paper was some kind of Fabriano, Chris wasn't sure what. She said it
> didn't have the Uno logo and she thought it might be artistico. (I'm
> assuming this is the old artistico, not the new artistico, but I don't
> know. I'm only assuming that because Chris isn't having the same problem
> with the new Artistico paper). I asked how hot the water was and she
> replied "As hot as my faucet will deliver--not hot enough to burn, just
> too hot to take a bath in." But most interesting: she had some BFK Rives
> in the same bathtubful of hot water, which did not exhibit the same
> problem, which was definite speckling and blotching of the print, where
> the sizing failed and pigment was absorbed differentially into the
> paper. Which suggests to me even more strongly that this interaction
> between factory sizing and hot water may be paper-related; some papers
> do it and some papers don't. It would also be interesting to know how
> Chris was sizing then. If both the paper and sizing are different, then
> who knows... the effect could be related to paper, or to sizing, or to
> both.
> kt
>
> Katharine Thayer wrote:
>>
>> Chris,
>> I remembered that I actually have this print, since you sent it to me so
>> I could put it up on my website for people to look at. Funny, I
>> remembered it as one kid diving, but actually it's a bigger kid with a
>> littler kid on his shoulders. I've got it out there ready to go, but
>> since it's your image I won't post the URL without your permission.
>> Katharine
>>
>> >
>> > Katharine Thayer wrote:
>>
>> > Actually, I think we've seen something in the past that sort of
>> > tangentially supports this idea. Chris, remember the weird prints you
>> > got on the papers that you shrank in hot water in the bathtub? (A kid
>> > diving off a diving board, is the print I remember). That was a very
>> > definite effect of hot water on the factory sizing of the paper. But I
>> > don't remember what the paper was, or whether there was speckling, or
>> > whether it was even a multiple print.
>> > Katharine
Received on Sat Mar 12 09:23:43 2005