Digital BW, The Print

Walking thru Lowe's this morning, I passed the screen door parts
display. About halfway down the aisle I did a double-take (rarely seen
in Lowe's). Geez, that looks like a Mayer Rod (Mayer Bar). On closer
inspection, I was intrigued and, not yet having ordered a Mayer Rod, I
bought the spring. (#4 D&G Spring, Zinc, about 15.25" in length) $2.42.
I put a digital micrometer (hey, we're talkin' digital printing here so
I just couldn't use an analog micrometer) on the spring wire..it
measures about .0488. This is larger than Paul's #14 Mayer (I think
.035) but I was already in for the $2.42. A 1/4" dowel fits nicely
inside the spring once I cut the attachment loops off each end.
Plate glass on my workbench (cabinetmaking bench..honest, it's dead
flat), taped an Epson Smooth Fine Art print to the glass, dribbled some
Minwax Polycrylic above the print (note how scientific this is) and
lightly dragged the rod through the poly and down the print.
Lovely coating, smooth, no bubbles. The print looks much richer with
great blacks. Couldn't measure the blacks as I was not up to driving
downtown to access the densitometer at the college. The coating is
obviously thicker than Paul's (a Mayer Rod coating is 1/10 the wire
diameter; so Paul's #14 is .0035 in thick and mine is .0048)
Cleanup was easy. Pulled the dowel out, rinsed inside and outside with
water.
I will get a #14 rod for the thinner coating (unless I can find a
smaller screen door spring (would that be a number 3 or a #5?)


Stan Shire
Associate Professor/Department Chair
Photographic Imaging
Community College of Philadelphia
Adobe Photoshop 6 A.C.E.
Author: Hands On Photoshop 7: Tutorial Workshops
 
215 751-8320
sshire@...