Archival Storage for Carbon on Cotton Prints
2011-11-27 by Bill
Looking for Suggestions I have been helping with a photo project for a county historical society with a great many old school class photos some back into the 1880's. The ones prior to WW II are in a mixed condition but most have surface scuffs and scratches others are torn or cracked and need a lot of work. The paper on some is turning brown and they have not been cared for being kept in a variety of boxes and envelopes. As I scan them I am puting them into 3 ring binders in inexpensive sheet protectors temporarily. Historical societies have little excess cash using donations membership dues and fund raisers to fund their projects. It is interesting how they get some of these items. The voulinteer fire department does controlled burns of old structures and when they do the walk through they remove any items that could have any historical value including old albums and boxes of photos and papers and any item that looks to have any historical value. The cleaned up prints have been done on 8 1/2 X 11 archival scrapbook paper about 65# and are then placed in a comic book sleeve with a buffered backing board a second sheet is added where names are known and it faces the back of the sleeve. I used these because many comics are expensive and the sleeves and boards are readily available and are inexpensive and are advertised as archival. I intend to purchase an Epson 1400 and Eboni 6 inks to use for the remainder of the project. I have been emailing Paul Roark about this and this is what he suggested and is what uses for a museum project. I am still looking at papers as I prefer to get it cut to 8 1/2 11 but he has convinced me to use a 100% cotton paper. I just need to find a good stock at an affordable cost. So does anyone have a suggestion from experience I am looking for help in avoiding pot holes and do not want to go down the garden path only to have the sprinklers turned on. So if you have lessons learned the hard way I am interested in skipping that class. When I had a day job my title was coordinator of research for a large aerospace company and later I worked in high energy physics and then with RF and the computer to analog interface developing a phased array antenna for celular towers. I worked with the high temp superconductors when they were the rage and did proof of concept research into using them in real world applications. I intend to bring that same planning and record keeping from proof of concept engineering to digital B&W. I always asked for the tough projects telling my director "Got any briar patches that need cleaning up" Carbon printing seems to be a place that offers some interesting work in a dynamic enviornment. I am reading the archives and am learing the techno babble hopefully this will keep me out of trouble. Bill Lewis