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Conserving and duplicating 110-year-old Cirkut negatives

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drew tanner

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I’m looking for advice on conserving 100-year-old Cirkut negatives. These are from a local private collection of negatives made by Harold Wagner in Marietta, Ohio. I’ve had the pleasure of printing a few negatives from this collection on Ilford FB for the owner already. However, these two are incredibly delicate and crumbling at the edges. They’re even being held together with scotch tape in a few spots. They have also been stored rolled (in paper towel tubes, no less) and have a strong curl. I’ve very carefully unrolled them and backed them with acid-free paper in my printing frame in attempt to flatten them. My hope is to make some enclosures for them out of archival mat board or acid free paper so they can be stored flat.

As for printing, I’d like to minimize their handling, so I’m considering duplicating the orignal negatives via an interpositive, which I would make with either some of the Agfa Aviphot or HP5 I have on hand. I’d welcome any tips/advice on this approach, as I haven’t had need to duplicate negatives until now, let alone ones that are 8x32 and 8x24.

I develop my own Cirkut negatives, so I’m not worried about the development workflow itself. Rather, I’m looking for advice on exposure, development to ensure good contrast for silver-gelatin printing from the original, to the interpostive, to the final duplicate.
 

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This article is helpful regarding the flattening:

It has me wondering whether I should futz with making duplicate negatives or just d*g*tize them, clean them up in Photoshop, and find someone with a printer who could run a couple of d*g*t*l negatives for me.
 
This article is helpful regarding the flattening:

It has me wondering whether I should futz with making duplicate negatives or just d*g*tize them, clean them up in Photoshop, and find someone with a printer who could run a couple of d*g*t*l negatives for me.

I think at this point, digitizing these fragile negatives and carefully storing the originals is probably your best option.
 
Hi, I don’t know if I could be of any help here, but I do have a large roll of Kodak 2422 film that could be used for direct duplication of these negatives. I can cut you a pretty large piece and send it to you if you want, I would just need to find a way to ship it. At the moment, I don’t have any spare aerial film cans. I could also just send you the entire roll. Do let me know if you would be interested. Maybe we can work something out.
 
Hi, I don’t know if I could be of any help here, but I do have a large roll of Kodak 2422 film that could be used for direct duplication of these negatives. I can cut you a pretty large piece and send it to you if you want, I would just need to find a way to ship it. At the moment, I don’t have any spare aerial film cans. I could also just send you the entire roll. Do let me know if you would be interested. Maybe we can work something out.

Thanks for that offer! I'll PM you for details.
 
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