RE: Gum hardening: top down experiment

Marek,

I won't deal with the issue of trying to prove that gum hardens from
the top any more, but will assume that it does and try to suggest a
protocol for testing to find a way to make use of the concept. I am
not suggesting a procedure to replace regular gum printing on paper,
but another procedure that would have its own characteristics and
technical problems to overcome. Don't expect this to be easy, but if
you apply a sound methodology to your testing you might save some
time and reach your goal a lot faster. For the sake of this
discussion I am going to assume that you will print on some type of
OHP material or other plastic that will hold the gum. What you do
with the print after that, whether leave it on the plastic or
transfer to a paper base, is a discussion for another day.

1. Coating. Apply fairly thick layer of gum coating to the surface,
and put a lot of pigment in it. How much? View the OHP material with
a piece of thin paper (Yupo for example) behind the pigmented layer
by transmitted light. It should be completely opaque, because if it
is not it will be very hard to get good shadow and highlights in one
printing. A slight excess beyond completely opaque is ok, at least
for this point. You may need to apply two or more separate coatings
to build up the necessary density, or maybe not depending on your
coating technique.

2. Sensitizer. How much sensitizer to add to the pigmented gum
solution? A lot less than if printing gum the regular way. If you are
using a saturated potassium dichromate solution I would suggest about
1/2 of what you normally use, or even as little as 1/4 or 1/8. I
sensitize my high relief carbon tissues with as little as 1/2%
solutions, and only about 10ml of the solution would be absorbed by
an 8X10 tissue. Does gum have the same sensitivity as gelatin? Don't
know, Kosar suggests it does but is that at the same percentage
solution gelatin and gum?

3. Exposure. Your exposures should be longer than when printing gum
the regular way, 2X, 4X or perhaps even longer. To get the most out
of your testing, use a step wedge. You will need to expose much
longer with this method than with the normal way of gum printing. How
much longer, you will have to work out.

4. After exposure, develop the step wedge print and allow it to dry.
Now evaluate it. Suppose that the print shows a full range of tones
but Dmax is very low. Problem? Most likely your dichromate solution
was too strong and most of the hardening took place at the very
bottom of the layer. Suppose that the print shows good Dmax but has a
limited exposure scale, say no more than four or five steps. Problem?
You don't have enough pigment in the coating, or the coating is to
thin. Remember, there is no magical number of steps you should have.
Instead, you should adjust this to the exposure scale of your
negatives. Assuming you develop your negatives to a DR of 1.5 or so,
your 21 step print of the step wedge should have good Dmax at Step 1
or 2 and some density for another nine or so steps, and no density
from about Step 11 or 12 to the end. Now go back and adjust your
coating height, or pigment concentration, and/or sensitizer strength
as suggested by the tests.

5. If this does not work the first time, don't blame me for the
failure. It took me a very long time to get all of this worked out in
making my own carbon tissue. Instead, just remember that failure is
an important part of the learning process.

Sandy

>Sandy,
>The piece did not fade as such, the esposed gum layer was so soft it
>started running down the transparency once I hanged it to dry.
>Actually it developed so fast, I pulled it out from the water too
>late. Somebody else was right here, you really can not arrest gum
>development as it is soluble in cold water as well.
>I will try more exposure.
>Marek, Houston
>
>>From: Dave Soemarko <fotodave@dsoemarko.us>
>>Reply-To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
>>To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
>>Subject: RE: Gum hardening: top down experiment
>>Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 12:56:23 -0400
>>
>>Perhaps "a piece of ice" might not be a good analogy. A piece of dampened
>>spongue might be closer.
>>
>>Dave
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Dave Soemarko [mailto:fotodave@dsoemarko.us]
>>Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 12:30 PM
>>To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
>>Subject: RE: Gum hardening: top down experiment
>>
>>It might be because the development is not complete, so there is still a lot
>>of unhardened gum (which contains water). Well, actually even the hardened
>>gum is soaked up with water at that point, so the water will continue to
>>develop the surrounding gum. Sort of like if you put a piece of ice on jello
>>versus you put a piece of ice on gum. The first case will have no problem
>>whereas the second will make a mess.
>>
>>
>>Dave
>>
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Sandy King [mailto:sanking@CLEMSON.EDU]
>>Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 12:19 PM
>>To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
>>Subject: RE: Gum hardening: top down experiment
>>
>>
>>Dave,
>>
>>You make some good points.
>>
>>Just a couple of follow-up comments.
>>
>>I know that gum will continue to develop in cold water, but my understanding
>>was that Marek's print was removed from the water and hung up to dry. If
>>that is so, I am still confused as to why it would fade.
>>
>>Sandy
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Hi Katharine, Marek, Sandy, Judy, and whoever interested,
>>>
>>>Thanks for your efforts and sharings on your findings.
>>>
>>>About the tests, however, I have a few suggestions:
>>>
>>>Katharine, you probably shouldn't expose longer than usual and expose
>>>the front and back differently because that will affect interpretation.
>>>Let's try to step back and look at our hypothesis first. Let's say we
>>>assume that hardening is from top to bottom (we don't have to agree on
>>>this, but we can take any view and start from there). The test then, is
>>>to expose it not too much from both side. If hardening is from top to
>>>bottom, the one exposed from the front will not reached the base, so it
>>>has nothing to hold on, so it will flake off, whereas the one exposed
>>>from the back will grab the base, so it will have some image. But if
>>>expose a lot (or strongly), then probably both will have an image
>>>because even the one exposed from the front will be exposed
>>>sufficiently to reach the base. Now the contrast of the two might be
>>>different, and so we might start to make different inference from there,
>>but that is not the original goal of the test.
>>>
>>>Suppose that we expose it normally, and get a fine image for the one
>>>exposed from the back but not for the one exposed from the front, we
>>>pretty much proved our hypothesis. But suppose we don't get an image
>>>from either one, then we need to adjust. It might be that the mylar
>>>might be cutting off a lot of UV, so we need to expose more. But if we
>>>expose more, is it a fair comparison because the front one doesn't have the
>>UV blocking by the mylar?
>>>So in order to have a reasonable test, we need to increase expose but
>>>also cover the front side by a piece of mylar during exposure.
>>>
>>>Our tests seem to be something in between. The fact that the image
>>>continue to dissolve after development seems to suggest that exposure
>>>is not enough so there is still a lot of unhardened gum (Sandy, to
>>>answer the question of why this is happening in gum but not in carbon,
>>>the difference in mechanism is that gelatine doesn't dissolve in cold water
>>whereas gum does).
>>>
>>>My suggestion would be to expose perhaps a step tablet with double the
>>>amount of time used for exposing through the back, but when exposing
>>>the front, cover it with a piece of mylar.
>>>
>>>And thank you again for all your efforts. I am by no means asking you to do
>>>a certain test. It is simply a suggestion from me, a lurker now. :-)
>>>
>>>
>>>Dave
>>>
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: Katharine Thayer [mailto:kthayer@pacifier.com]
>>>Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 11:22 AM
>>>To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
>>>Subject: Re: Gum hardening: top down experiment
>>>
>>>Marek, thanks for your response. My patience for this discussion was
>>>coming to an end just as your post popped into my mailbox; you have
>> >revived me. A couple of comments embedded below:
>>>
>>>
>>>On Apr 11, 2006, at 7:41 AM, Marek Matusz wrote:
>>>
>>>> Katharine,
>>>> I was very impressed with your results and thanks for contributing
>>>> to this discussion in a positive and constructive way. Looking at
>>>> your scans I would conclude that heavily pigmented gum layers on
>>>> unabsorbant substrate do harden from the top down, just like other
>>>> dichromated colloids.
>>>> I see very nice tonal gradations in the print exposed from the bottom.
>>>> The three variables (gum, dichromate and pigment ratios) are not
>>>> optimised, but at this point I am looking for illustration of
>>>> principles, rather then perfect prints.
>>>
>>>Thanks, I agree.
>>>
>>>> I did a similar experiment last night. I coated a heavily pigmented
>>>> and thick layer of gum on a transparency material that I use to print
>>>> diginegatives (HP brand). This brand has a nice sandy feel to it, so
>>>> I though it would help to hold the gum. I exposed coated pieces for
>>> > twice my usual times, one through top, the other from the bottom.
>>>
>>>For whatever it's worth, I exposed the front-exposed print on mylar for
>>>6 minutes, which is 4X my usual time for that negative, and the
>>>back-exposed print for twice the time of the front-exposed one (12
>>minutes).
>>>
>>>> The piece exposed from the top flaked off rather quickly leaving no
>>>> image. The was no image that I could see at any point. The piece
>>>> exposed thorough the bottom once in the water started behaving like a
>>>> carbon print, where the colloid was dissolving in water, rather then
>>>> flaking off. After about 3 minutes I was excited to see a full
>>>> tonality image, with beautiful tonal gradations. Unfortunately the
>>>> image continued to develop even afet I took it out of water and
>>>> hanged it to dry.
>>>
>>>This is exactly what happened with the front-exposed print in my
>>>experiment; it looked okay, although very high-contrast, when I took it
>>>out of the water, but by the time it was dry the hardened gum had
>>>melted and puddled on the mylar. (This is not what usually happens when
>>>I print on scuffed mylar using a more normal emulsion).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> This morning there was only a faint image left on the piece of
>>>> transparency. I will give it another try with much longer exposure
>>>> and perhaps lower dichromate to get more depth of UV penetration and
>>>> hardening and higher Dmax.
>>>>
>>>
>>>I look forward to your report,
>>>Katharine
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>> From: Katharine Thayer <kthayer@pacifier.com>
>>>>> Reply-To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
>>>>> To: alt photo <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
>>>>> Subject: Gum hardening: top down?
>>>>> Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 11:33:03 -0700
>>>>>
>>>>> Okay, I've coated a very thick, very heavily-pigmented gum emulsion
>>>>> on mylar and printed it from the front and from the back. A couple
>>>>> of comments before I give you the URL:
>>>>>
>>>>> (1) though the emulsion was very heavily pigmented, two things
>>>>> resulted in not a very deep DMax: (a) the fact that I used ivory
>>>>> black, a transparent pigment (if I were to do it again, I'd use
>>>>> lamp
>>>>> black) and (b) the fact that it's printed on a transparent
>>>>> material and was scanned as a transparency, with the light shining
>>through it.
>>>>> But the thing to note is, be that as it may, the DMax is about the
>>>>> same in both prints.
>>>>>
>>>>> (2) there's a light brown pigment stain (ivory black is a brownish
>>>>> black) in both prints that is probably a function of the heavy
>>>>> pigmentation. It hardly shows in the prints themselves, but for some
>>>>> reason was accentuated in the scanning.
>>>>>
>>>>> (3) I don't honestly know what to make of the results. If you look
>>>>> just at the prints on mylar, you'd have to conclude that
>>>>> back- printing is much superior to front-printing, at least for a
>>>>> thick coat on mylar. But if you compare the back-printed print on
>>>>> mylar to the regular front-printed gum print (using a less
>>>>> heavily-pigmented emulsion) on paper (at the bottom of the page),
>>>>> it's hard to claim that the back-printed print is superior. But
>>>>> since they are on different materials, it's apples and oranges.
>> >>>
>>>>> So I guess if I were forced to draw a conclusion from this rather
>>>>> inconclusive test, I'd say that if you are going to print on mylar
>>>>> using a very thick and heavily pigmented emulsion, then you'll
>>>>> probably do better printing from the back. But if you're printing
>>>>> on paper, you can get fine results printing from the front with a
>>>>> less pigmented emulsion.
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.pacifier.com/~kthayer/html/topdown.html
>>>>>
>>>>> Katharine
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
Received on Tue Apr 11 15:26:14 2006