Digital BW, The Print

There is an  explanation of the Arches Bright White papers at
http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/paper2a.html.  Perhaps the "smooth" variety
that folks are looking for is the 300 gsm version (smoother than the 640
gsm) rather than a hot press bright white.  At any rate the site has an
interesting review of the Arches papers.

Dan Culbertson

And a few other no doubt expensive papers that look like they 
would be worth exploring. Has anyone come up with a home-brew 
coating for printing on art papers?

> There is an  explanation of the Arches Bright White papers at
> http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/paper2a.html.


--
Tim Spragens
http://www.borderless-photos.com

> And a few other no doubt expensive papers that look like they
> would be worth exploring. Has anyone come up with a home-brew
> coating for printing on art papers?

Don't laugh, these work pretty good -- pain in the rear to do though.

For pigment inks or dye inks that won't work with gelatin (see below) use
liquid egg whites (albumen).  Break the slight gloss with a few drops of
Maalox in the egg white solution.

For dye inks use Knox gelatin.  Soak the paper in the gelatin solution and
hang to dry or brush on multiple thin coatings.  Probably could use some
sort of roller as well but I always sort of liked the residual brush
strokes.  Note that not all dye based inks work with gelatin - Wide Spectrum
and Spectratones work fine with it.  Under some conditions you may have to
moisturize the paper before printing since a heavy gelatin coating tends to
get pretty hard.  Possibly the below recipe I found would be better and not
harden so much but I haven't had a chance to try it yet.

From http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~mukluk/misc.html
Part of a Carbon Process printing recipe.

Mix together
110 parts gelatin
25 parts sugar
12 parts dry soap
350 parts water 


Finally - there is some sort of chemical that folks add to prevent mold
growth and insect problems.  Don't remember what it is though.  My
experiments didn't need preserving -- they were just experiments, better off
as roach food.

Dan Culbertson

Thanks for the tips! A new medium - "Digital Albumen Prints" 
sounds impressive. I wonder if I'll ever find the time to try.

I assume that the soap is used to break surface tension, what 
does the sugar do? Was it boric acid that was used as the insect 
inhibitor?

Tim

> Don't laugh, these work pretty good -- pain in the rear to do though.



--
Tim Spragens
http://www.borderless-photos.com

> Thanks for the tips! A new medium - "Digital Albumen Prints"
> sounds impressive. I wonder if I'll ever find the time to try.
> 
> I assume that the soap is used to break surface tension, what
> does the sugar do? Was it boric acid that was used as the insect
> inhibitor?
> 
> Tim

The albumen pre-print coating is the easiest to use - really simple and it
perks up apparent color saturation in the print.  It does not increase the
paper's ability to hold detail though.  That would probably require some
sort of impervious barrier between the coating and the paper (and albumen
definitely isn't impervious on its own).  With an egg white coating the
whole image will wash right off with water unless you use a post printing
water proof coating.  And if you do that you get some of the same apparent
saturation increase that the egg whites provide.  My solution was to just go
with commercially coated papers and leave the albumen to others.  But it was
fun in the early days when there were no commercially coated art papers and
it might be useful if you have a special oriental paper or other hand-made
special fiber you want to print on.  And "digital albumen" *does* sound
impressive!

Beats me on the sugar additive to the gelatin coating -- my recipe was just
plain gelatin but it cures pretty darn hard all by itself.  I found the
sugar/soap recipe on an interesting web site and thought I might try it some
day since I was looking for something to keep the gelatin more pervious.
Soap might do it.  I sort of think the sugar is there in case you feel like
a late night snack and all that is around is some gelatin coated paper.
Might as well make it taste good.   Wouldn't add any boric acid if that was
a possibility.   I believe the real additive to gelatin coatings for insect
and mold suppression was a lot more toxic than boric acid though - probably
one of those things you can't get any more because they deplete the ozone
layer or cause cancer.

Dan