Folks,
I haven't read what Stan wrote, so I can't comment specifically on the content, but I think there needs to be a bit of context taken with what he has written.
Let me first say that I think Stan is possibly the best pt/pd printer in the US right now. He is producing prints and getting image qualities out of his prints like no one else that I have seen. When I was at APIS two years ago, Dick Arentz and I were talking, and he commented on Stan's prints with very favorable sentiment.
Stan is printing commercially; for clients. This is the driving force behind an absolute level of consistency that he is striving for. When he does a print edition for someone, they probably approve a proof image printed in a certain way, with certain tonal qualities, etc., and if he were to then send them prints that have drifted a little due to humidity changes or temperature, etc., he would probably be getting rejections from the clients.
The critical nature of commercial printing for a client probably forces a huge amount of waste prints that never make it out of the shop, and he is doing everything he can to eliminate the variables to streamline the printing process.
I think it is fine if someone wants to bring pt/pd printing to the level of precision that can be expected with traditional silver processes, but that is not my approach to the pt/pd printing process. I feel that the variability of the process is part of the beauty of the effort, is very much a part of the nature of a hand-made print.
I limit the variability a good bit to ensure I am getting the representation of the image on the paper that I would like, but I do not make any attempt to eliminate it, because I feel that is a part of the process that helps make each hand-made print unique.
Now that said, you all have a RH meter in the darkroom, right? In the winter, I run humidifiers to get the humidity and temperature up to 70 degrees, about 50% RH. I won't print until it is over 40%, and under 60%.
I will pre-humidify the paper if necessary, and then leave it to normalize to the RH of the darkroom. This will normally only take a few minutes. As far as I'm concerned, if you can get the darkroom up to a proper RH, and keep it there, than there is no reason to build a humidor for your paper, because the darkroom essentially acts to do the same thing.
Don't expect a stack of paper in the drawer to be at the correct humidity, but if you pull out the sheets you plan to use that day and put them on your drying rack while you get everything set up, you will probaby be set to go without any delay. When they dry from the coating, they will reach a steady state condition near the RH of the room, so the paper will be consistent in humidity as long as you keep the room RH consistent.
Since I use the DOP process, this level of control is all that is required for my work. With POP, there is much more sensitivity to the humidity, so you either have to get very precise with the controls, or you have to live with the variability built into the process.
---Michael
I noticed before I printed though.
