Digital BW, The Print

Hi all, I am new to this group, My name is Steve Law, so a little history about me would be nice.

I work at a frame shop out in CA and we have an Epson 7600-UC and a 9600-UC printer, with which we reproduce local artists work.

I myself am a B&W photographer and recently found out about QuadTone RIP. I got very excited as could be expected.

The first thing I want to say is we are using Lyson Cave Paint Inks in our printers.

I went about trying to create some curves using QTR and came away a little discouraged. I am having problems with the "Ink Separation Test Page - Determining Ink Limit".

The instructions state that the printers we have usually achieve 
high numbers in the 80% to 90% for the ink limit. (This is from page 13 in the User Guide prepared by Tom Moore ver. 1.1 April 2005.)

I am only getting 25% to 35% in the Blacks and very little more in M and C and just a little more yet in LC, LM, and LK.

Here are two questions: #1. Could this be due to the fact that we are using Lyson Cave Paint Inks? #2. How does this relate to gamut?

I haven't been able to glean much from the group posts to really tell one way or the other.

Thanks for all of your patience in reading this post.
Sincerely, Steve Law