Re: Iron

Terry wrote:

> No-one has attempted to answer the questions:
> 1. What additional benefit will be achieved from this research to measure
>residual iron ?
> 2. How many will benefit ?
> 3. .Who will benefit.?
> 4. If problems arise from ineffective clearing, how will any new methods
>encourage people to be any more careful ?

I don't understand -- why are you so antagonistic toward people interested
in researching the archivality of alt processes? Why the need to denigrate
efforts to understand these issues? Why should someone interested in the
subject need to justify their efforts on the Terry King Four Question Scale
of Worth? It's perfectly fine for you to think that the traditional
methods are all you need -- but why throw stones at others who are trying
to advance the state of the art (or at least to prove that the state of the
art is adequate for their purposes)?

I, personally, do not always place as much emphasis on archivality as Loris
appears to do. That is, I am content to work at times in media that I know
may not be eternal. But I do want to know the expected life of my work,
and I do often work in long-lived media (mainly Pt and carbon). If
archivality is more important to Loris, who are we to (in effect) tell him
he shouldn't be so concerned about it by belittling his efforts? That
strikes me as the epitome of arrogance.

Loris wants to know if residual iron is a worry for iron-based processes,
and if so, how low we need to get it for acceptable archivality
(recognizing that this may differ by the residue species, by support, by
the chemical composition and structure of the image, and by our own
definition of "acceptable archivality"), how we can tell what the residual
level is, and how we can lower the residual levels. These are all fair
questions, and I do not see that your constant but unproductive dribble on
the subject adds anything to the effort or to the list. In short, (and I
commend this to ALL list members at ALL times), if you haven't something
useful to add, why not just remain silent? (As the American author Samuel
Clemens said, it is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to
speak up and remove all doubt.)

That said, you did raise one worthwhile issue earlier in the proceedings:
Is there any reason to believe that the traditional 1% HCl clearing bath is
insufficient in reducing residual iron to negligible levels? But to answer
this, we need to answer the questions that Loris is pursuing: What are
negligible levels? What effects the levels? How can we measure the levels?
[I, personally, suspect that a 1 or 2% HCl bath IS sufficient for quite
good archivality -- but I have conducted no formal tests, and have no
evidence, other than prints that still look good after 30+ years, to
support my belief, while Ryuji has given at least some cause to question
it. I, for one, welcome someone looking into this, and you should, too.]

Best regards,

etienne
Received on Sun Mar 26 22:44:51 2006