Arhival Print Washers

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 16:29:44 -0500, LR Kalajainen
wrote:

Can't say I agree on the D-Max being reduced by prolonged soaking. I
have not found that to be so for me. Nor have I ever experienced
emulsion flaking (in B&W materials) in an overnight soak; you may be
right about color, but since I don't do any C-prints, I can't speak to
that. I have had the emulsion come off B & W stuff after three days and
nights of soaking, but in the time between, say, 10 pm and 7 am, which
is what I'm principally referring to, I've never had it happen. I've
also soaked Ilfochromes overnight with no damage. It may somewhat
depend on the ambient water temperature how fast emulsion removal
occurs. When I'm not in the darkroom, the ambient temperature is around
65, and at that temp, things are fine.

I'm not advocating leaving things soak overnight; just saying that for
convenience' sake, tray washing will permit that.

Nor do I find tray washing more time-consuming or demanding than a print
washer. I have an old Paterson print washer with the lift-out plastic
cage that holds a dozen or so 8X10's. It worked OK, but was the
noisiest critter--- made loud squealy-gurgling sounds due to the way the
water intake worked. I hated listening to it.

Tray washing definitely uses less water than a washer.



Gregory Blank wrote:

In article ,
Peter De Smidt pdesmidt*no*spam*@tds.*net* wrote:



wrote:
Over night on that last


soak should be OK. Dan



You want to be careful of that long a soak. Dave Valvo, who was project
manager for Kodak's current BW papers (except AZO, of course), says that
extended washing causes a breakdown of the paper fibers and can lead to
problems down the road. Overnight, he told me, is definitely too long.

-Peter



Your correct it is a very bad idea, it effectively lowers the D max if
your soaking prints beyond 4-6 hours. I've seen emulsion come off prints
in flakes soaking overnight.

If you try an overnight soak with color materials all you have is black
jelly and a clean white piece of paper. Been there done that.




I had a home -made archival washer which held the prints in pockets
made from plastic window screening. It worked well I thought until I
noticed that overnight soaks often left impressions from the
screening on the prints, and in warm weather emulsion peeled from the
paper. Gave it up in favor of a commercial archival washer.