Digital BW, The Print

At 5:15 PM +0000 12/31/05, Clayton Jones wrote:
>
>Hello Sam,
>
>>I'd appreciate any advice about how to make any of this more robust.
>
>If you haven't already, get a sample of Museo Max.  It's so tough you
>can't scrape it off with a fingernail, so it will certainly resist the
>abrasion of being in a stack of cards, being handled, etc.  All other
>papers I've tried can be scraped off, with verying degrees of pressure.

I haven't gotten any Museo Max yet, Clayton, but I'm going to because 
it sounds very promising for up-scale card stock which has to run the 
post-office and handout gauntlets.


>As for water, I just did some tests with some old work prints
>
>K3 on VFA
>K3 on Max
>K3 on Innova Fiba
>K3 on Innova Sm Cotton
>K3 on Innova Soft Texture
>K3 on Moab Kayenta
>UT7 on Condor BW
>Eboni BO on Condor BW
>Eboni BO on Merlin Sm
>Eboni BO on PR
>Eboni BO on Aurora
>Eboni BO on EEM
>
>I held them under running water until thoroughly soaked.  None of them
>bled or ran from the force of the running water.  I then did two tests:
>
>Smear Test - rubbed lightly with my thumb.  Two papers failed the
>smear test: EEM and Merlin Sm.  They smeared almost instantly (by
>"smear" I mean the ink [or the coating containing it] liquified and
>"ran").  VFA didn't smear, but the ink came off in patches with very
>little rubbing pressure - it was very delicate.  All the rest except
>Max were similar in that they didn't smear but eventually came off
>with increased pressure.  Max was the most resistant.  Only under the
>most extreme pressure it looked a bit abrased.  But it never came off.
>Condor BW and PR were nearly as tough as Max.
>
>Scrape Test - scraped them with a thumbnail.  They all could be
>scraped off pretty easily, but the Max was the most resistant.  VFA
>was the least resistant.  
>
>To summarize, when wet Max seems to be the toughest, followed by
>Condor BW and PR, with VFA being the most delicate (however, VFA is
>very abrasion resistant when dry, as is Kayenta which is just average
>when wet).
>
>Regards,
>Clayton
>[snip]

Thanks also, Clayton, for all this detail on your when-wet tests. 
It's going to help me quit living dangerously with my simplistic 
assumptions about the efficacy of pigment inks. And thanks to Greg 
for the wake-up call. Happy New Year to both of you and to everyone 
else reading this thread.
--
Sam