Re: Glutaraldehyde, yupo

P.S. I forgot to add, for those who may have come later, that I didn't
like glutaraldehyde as a hardener (on Lana paper); it gave me a grainy
image that often just flaked off (see:

http://www.pacifier.com/~kthayer/html/Current3.html

The fact that it didn't work well for me may be because I mixed it too
strong (my solution was .04% as a percentage of the total gelatin
solution). That's a very small amount, but still nearly 3x the amount
Chris uses. Or it could be because I used Lana paper and maybe Lana
doesn't take to glutaraldehyde as well as Fabriano does.

I just personally don't like the Fabriano paper; I don't like the
textured blotterlike-appearing surface. I did notice that when I did an
experiment sizing this paper with glyoxal-hardened gum, that the size
somehow closed up the open surface and made it smoother and print nicer
(to my eye), so I can imagine the glutaraldehyde having a similar
effect.

I bring up this counterexample not to be argumentative but simply to
give people more information and to remind us that observations differ
about everything in gum, including this.

I thought there were three or four people who had reported toxic
reactions to glutaraldehyde, not just two, but I don't have time to look
it up. At the time of that discussion, I thought it was a very high
number considering how very few gum printers here have actually used
glutaraldehyde.
Katharine
Received on Fri Sep 2 14:08:29 2005