Digital BW, The Print

Steve,

>I've always been a bit of a contrarian when it comes to dry-
>mounting. ... ther's no way a photo or a print (on any
>but the heaviest papers) will stay flat and look nice
>for any length of time without being mounted.

I always dry mounted my silver prints.  (As did AA, I believe.)  However,
I've found tape-hanging EAM behind an overmat works fine for 16x20 prints
under glass.  If there are some ripples, the very matte finish seems to be
hiding the problem.

>As for the Cone Museum K - I've been printing with it for a few
>days, about to finish my first cart. My impressions? I like the way
>it looks, ...

I agree.

>... On the down side, I find myself
>doing more cleaning cycles, almost before every print; I have to do
>at least a nozzle check first, and that gets anoying. ...

That could be bad news.  I printed a cart full of the ink on my 1160 and
didn't notice the problem.

That said, I'm a bit suspicious that there could be problems with these new
"high load" pigmented insets.  These inks (and Museum black is one of them)
have about twice the pigment load of the older pigments.  To get that load
to be held suspended with an acceptable settling rate, the viscosity of the
ink may be at the ragged edge of what Epson's can tolerate.  Any glitch --
aging, slight leak that allows evaporation, slight production variation,
etc. -- just might put the viscosity over the top and cause problems.

However, to get a blacker black or a higher-gamut color, raising the load of
pigments seems more palatable to me than throwing in dyes.  So, we shall
see.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com