Musings on washing fiber-based prints

David Nebenzahl wrote:

Actually, not true: while I had assumed up until now that running
water was
necessary for washing, seeing that Water Saver Print Washer makes me
think
that my assumption may be incorrect. So I'm not necessarily stuck on
using
running water. The idea of getting maximal washing effect for minimal
water
usage is definitely intriguing.

I wonder if something in between might work well? Say something like
the Water
Saver, but with a low to moderate flow of water through it?


Two items from Martin Reed's Mysteries of the Vortex:
Writing of the Ilford sequence, 5 min. wash, 10 min. hca
5 min. wash, he thinks it suggests the use of tray washing. The
Ilford High Speed method uses a Quick film strength fix. Take note
of the 10 min. hca. BTW, used one OR two bath Ilford's Fast method
is very wastefull of fixer. In all fairness they do explain
the two bath method at print strength.
Martin also mentions the baryta layer as the real slow down
when washing. Papers lacking that layer were tested and were
sooner to wash clean. At an atomic level that layer is at
quite a depth. I don't think any flow rate will help at
that depth. A slow migration of ions is involved.
After the fix I suggest a good rinse, a hca, another good rinse
then into a tray.
I,m ahead of the game. I use paper fix at a 1:49 dilution,
one-shot. I can pull a full 200 8 x 10s from one liter of
concentrate and at the same time have archivaly fixed
prints from a one-bath fixer. Dan

Gregory Blank wrote:
: In article . com,
: wrote:

: Sadly our planet with its attendent population growth, cannot sustain
: wasting water like this for much longer. Of course the larger issue
: here is, are your prints worth processing to an archival standard? Put
: more simply, will anyone be interested in your prints after you die? If
: not, save the water.
:
: Mark

: Complete and total Bull ****. Water can be easily recycled. Using solar
: power. The thing thats lacking is creative thought.

All water is recycled in one way or another. It doesn't simply "go away"
when it goes down the drain.
--




Keep working millions on welfare depend on you
-------------------

Gregory Blank wrote:
: In article . com,
: wrote:

: Sadly our planet with its attendent population growth, cannot sustain
: wasting water like this for much longer. Of course the larger issue
: here is, are your prints worth processing to an archival standard? Put
: more simply, will anyone be interested in your prints after you die? If
: not, save the water.
:
: Mark

: Complete and total Bull ****. Water can be easily recycled. Using solar
: power. The thing thats lacking is creative thought.

All water is recycled in one way or another. It doesn't simply "go away"
when it goes down the drain.
--




Keep working millions on welfare depend on you
-------------------

bob wrote:
: Tom Phillips wrote:
:
: BTW, one can soften only a percentage of the water,
: as I understand. I.e., you don't have to replace all
: the calcium/magnesium, only a part of it so if you
: have very hard water you could soften only by 50%.
: A bypass system should let you do this.

: When I was a kid in Kansas, which has very hard water due to the lime
: stone, we had a water softener for a time. It was inline with the water
: heater, so only hot water was softened.

: The theory being that the primary reason for softening is to facilitate
: washing with soap, which usually happens with warm water.

: The company that put in the softener instructed us not to drink the hot
: water, because of the salt content.

The salt is only in the softened water during the filter flush. The water softener
we had when I was growing up was connected to the incoming feed.
--




Keep working millions on welfare depend on you
-------------------

LR Kalajainen wrote:
Still water washing with several changes of water and shuffling over
several hours works just fine for FB prints; been doing it for years. I
once forgot and left them in for three days and that soaked off the
emulsion, but I when I'm finishing a print session just before bedtime,
I frequently leave them in overnight with no ill effects at all.

Other than washing out the brighteners, I assume you meant.

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
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It takes at least 24 hours of soaking before the brighteners begin to
wash out. In prints left in water overnight from, say, 11 pm until 8
am, the brighteners aren't affected--- at least I've not been able to
tell any difference visually.

Jean-David Beyer wrote:

LR Kalajainen wrote:

Still water washing with several changes of water and shuffling over
several hours works just fine for FB prints; been doing it for
years. I once forgot and left them in for three days and that soaked
off the emulsion, but I when I'm finishing a print session just
before bedtime, I frequently leave them in overnight with no ill
effects at all.

Other than washing out the brighteners, I assume you meant.

"LR Kalajainen" wrote in message
...
It takes at least 24 hours of soaking before the brighteners begin to wash
out. In prints left in water overnight from, say, 11 pm until 8 am, the
brighteners aren't affected--- at least I've not been able to tell any
difference visually.

What about leaving them soaking in ice-water? Can that put off the loss of
brighteners? Say Yes so I can find _some_ virtue for living in the
winterland.

In article ,
LR Kalajainen wrote:

It takes at least 24 hours of soaking before the brighteners begin to
wash out. In prints left in water overnight from, say, 11 pm until 8
am, the brighteners aren't affected--- at least I've not been able to
tell any difference visually.

If you measure the Dmax, I can almost bet it will drop
by at least .15 by soaking that long,....maybe not an issue as
Tom Phillips previously stated regarding Glossy papers but
Semi matte papers start out farther down the scale so a .15 drop is
apparent to my eye with regard to them.

--
LF Website @ http://members.verizon.net/~gregoryblank

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong,
is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."--Theodore Roosevelt, May 7, 1918

LR Kalajainen wrote:
It takes at least 24 hours of soaking before the brighteners begin to
wash out. In prints left in water overnight from, say, 11 pm until 8
am, the brighteners aren't affected--- at least I've not been able to
tell any difference visually.

Well, you have not read the rearch of Dr. Richard Joseph Henry who tested
various papers for brighteners being washed out. In his book, "Controls in
Black and White Photography", second edition, pages 105-112, he shows
graphs of brightener remaining vs. washing time for Brovira grade 3 and
Ilfobrom grade 2, paper that had been fixed in either F24 (no hardener),
or Kodafix (hardener). Whether the fixer contained a hardener did not make
much difference.

Brighteners begin to wash out right away, 30% or so in the first 1/2 hour.
For Ilfobrom, 50% of the brightener was washed out in less than two hours,
where it took about 12 hours to wash half the brightener from Brovira. He
later tested Ilford Galerie using Ilford's recommended processing,
Galerie's fluorescence was about 23% less than that of Ilfobrom. So the
problem is quite real.

Jean-David Beyer wrote:

LR Kalajainen wrote:

Still water washing with several changes of water and shuffling over
several hours works just fine for FB prints; been doing it for
years. I once forgot and left them in for three days and that soaked
off the emulsion, but I when I'm finishing a print session just
before bedtime, I frequently leave them in overnight with no ill
effects at all.

Other than washing out the brighteners, I assume you meant.



--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 22:05:00 up 46 days, 6:22, 3 users, load average: 4.34, 4.23, 4.15

jjs wrote:
"LR Kalajainen" wrote in message
...

It takes at least 24 hours of soaking before the brighteners begin to wash
out. In prints left in water overnight from, say, 11 pm until 8 am, the
brighteners aren't affected--- at least I've not been able to tell any
difference visually.


What about leaving them soaking in ice-water? Can that put off the loss of
brighteners? Say Yes so I can find _some_ virtue for living in the
winterland.


It might retard the effect if the water were frozen. But the colder the
water, the slower the washing. (The converse is not true much above the
normal processing temperatures as the increased diffusion rate is
counterbalanced by the increased swelling of the emulsion.)

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 22:15:00 up 46 days, 6:32, 3 users, load average: 4.27, 4.22, 4.16