Viagra Glyoxal

While I was away last night minding my own business teaching students
photography, somehow my name came into some fracas.

Believe it or not, I did not start the "how hard is hard enough" line, tho
it certainly is one I wish I would have, because it is just tooo clever!
But I am sure Mark's interest in who started it was to get the "thrust" of
the message heheheh. Even tho, I admit, I ramble on about the evils of
glyoxal at times.

Which leads me to one more ramble, as Katharine's post interested me. In the
last batch of glut hardened paper I was using there were a couple sheets
that felt slimy to me in the developing water. Now, I don't use boiling
water to develop, but room temp tap water making the gelatin soft is a
problem. I'm not sure why that only happened on a couple sheets. It didn't
seem to create any staining problem so it isn't a big deal, just an
interesting observation.

It's these quirky observations, such as Katharine's boiling, which get filed
back into the mind and perhaps will amount to some new gum understanding
some day. The gum ones interest me the most, but I wish we'd get into some
of this with platinum, too. How come no one ever talks about picky platinum
points??? Did this all go on before 1999 when I came on the list?

Personally, I think the list has been so dam quiet lately that I welcome a
good ramble on, just not a grumble with my name involved.

Can't wait to share this one weird article from the early 1900's with the
list that references gum hardening: it was a guy who figured out that when
the dichromate was added to the gum, it immediately hardened, and then got
less hard as time wore on. So he devised a system to deal with that. This
also references Judy's find of staining in the highlights with less
exposure. But I have to sift thru it first and condense. It is a HOOT. I
mean, maybe he was totally outa water, but maybe there is some truth to what
he says. Whatever the case, it is one more quirky observation to add to the
sum knowledge of gum (sum of gum).

The end.
Chris
Received on Thu May 5 07:17:30 2005