Digital BW, The Print

First off, I'd like to extend a hearty thanks to Paul and others for the
wealth of info on coating techniques. Come to think of it, I'd like to
extend similar thanks to everyone who contributes to the enormous info bank
we have here. This is one of the all-time best of the net digests, IMHO.

I am greatly intrigued by your technique, Paul. (And I'm deeply grateful for
the many hours of research you've done and the fact that you have so kindly
shared your findings here...). With a background in print design, I'm
familiar with metering rods (in principle, anyway) on press, where they
essentially scrape away the excess of varnish that's applied to the
substrate as it passes the bath. But if I'm reading your posts and the
archived files correctly, you're actually just pushing the rod across the
image -- using it to apply, rather than pull off the excess? Forgive me if
this is a silly question, but I'm intrigued enough to experiment a bit one
of these days and I'd don't want to miss anything in the principles, anyway.
That way if I fail miserably and slink back to 'fridge for comfort it will
be for lack of skill and technique rather than a simple blunder of
preparedness.

Matthew Born

Very interesting. I, like many of us, it would seem, love the black density
from dyes but would very much like to find something that lasts a bit
longer. I also like the general look and feel of Photo Rag and Satine, but
even with my dyes and lots of tweaking they seem awfully light. There's a
lot of uneven surface area there for the light to bounce around in; varnish
would do the trick. If a 2200 ever shows up on our (U.S) shores again, I
might jump in and give the Mayer rod a whirl. Or I could varnish a dye print
and get some *really* interesting results...I'm assuming that, unlike the
commercial offset inks I'm used to, inkjet dyes would smear like butter, no?
Or I stand under Mark's window and wait for that 9600 to come sailing out. I
figure if the blacks are that light, it won't hurt too much when it lands on
me.

Thanks again,
Matthew

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>>Mathew,

>>This is a common technique in ink/pigment labs where we use the Mayer rod
for testing small samples.  I then adapted this for use with coatings for
our prints.  It works well up to about 24" wide.  Beyond that I think it
will be difficult to manage the rod without a specially built rod holder.

The key with a rod coating is using the proper rod (wire) size for the
viscosity of the coating that you are applying...this in turn needs to be
balanced with the polymer solids in the coating.

Robert