Drying & Mounting bromoils

walter23 · Mar 2, 2008

I finally got around to prepping some bleach/tan solution and I'm going to try some bromoil bleaching & inking this week, but I'm wondering about the drying and mounting aspect of things.

How do you dry them? I have acess to this sort-of-annoying stretched canvas heated drier, and even with regular silver prints I have all kinds of hassles with the emulsion sometimes sticking to the canvas, or little hairs peeling off the canvas and needing to be cleaned carefully off the print. Do you usually just hang dry them? I guess I could make a proper screen drying shelf unit, which I sort of need anyway.

Secondly, does a hot dry-mount press cause the ink to transfer out of the matrix? What do you do to flatten and mount your prints?

redrockcoulee · Mar 2, 2008

Walter

I am so glad there is soon to be a bromoil expert in Southern Alberta! Next winter when I got a darkroom again I will certainly try bromoils and bromoil transfers (wife has an etching press). Watkins book states drying them by hanging them on a line with clothes pins and Lewis sets them onto plywood with tape and sometimes zaps them as well in the microwave. I would also think that in blotters like an etching would work as well.

Good luck and would love to knew how you do with them, either here or on the Calgary User group.

Ivan

Gene_Laughter · Mar 2, 2008

Drying - I simply hang 'em on a wire to dry.

Flatten - Let the print (and ink) dry for a couple of days). I wet the back of the print with a sponge and place it in a dry mount press between two scrap pieces of matt board. I leave it there for 5 to 10 minutes with the press set on about 200 degrees.

Cheers,

Gene

Dave Miller · Mar 3, 2008

Gene, Is that wet as in soaking, or wet as in slightly damp?

walter23 · Mar 3, 2008

Gene, no problem with ink transferring to the matt board? Thanks for the help. Hopefully I can get my first (and possibly quite ugly) bromoil inked up this week

The bleach / tan is sitting patiently in my darkroom. It's so satisfying finally mixing up a poisonous brew that actually looks like toxic sludge - green with yellow foam. Everything else extremely poisonous I've ever worked with has been so unremarkably colourless and bland.

walter23 · Mar 3, 2008

redrockcoulee said:
Walter

I am so glad there is soon to be a bromoil expert in Southern Alberta! Next winter when I got a darkroom again I will certainly try bromoils and bromoil transfers (wife has an etching press). Watkins book states drying them by hanging them on a line with clothes pins and Lewis sets them onto plywood with tape and sometimes zaps them as well in the microwave. I would also think that in blotters like an etching would work as well.

Good luck and would love to knew how you do with them, either here or on the Calgary User group.

Ivan

If it works out I'll post a scan on the LFUG (and probably here).

Gene_Laughter · Mar 3, 2008

Dave Miller said:
Gene, Is that wet as in soaking, or wet as in slightly damp?

Hi Dave! I wring out the wet sponge and lightly rub all over the back of the bromoil print. It's not wet and there's no standing water, but very damp. The heat from the press perfectly flattens the print.

Cheers,

Gene

Gene_Laughter · Mar 3, 2008

walter23 said:
Gene, no problem with ink transferring to the matt board? Thanks for the help. Hopefully I can get my first (and possibly quite ugly) bromoil inked up this week

The bleach / tan is sitting patiently in my darkroom. It's so satisfying finally mixing up a poisonous brew that actually looks like toxic sludge - green with yellow foam. Everything else extremely poisonous I've ever worked with has been so unremarkably colourless and bland.

After drying for a couple of days the ink doesn't transfer to the matt board.

I have never had "yellow foam," or any foam, in my bleach/tan brew? :confused:

Are you mixing the bleach chemicals with distilled water? My bleach is a clear emerald green liquid. Is your pot dichromate a 1% solution - 30 ml to a liter? Your description leads me to think that something is amiss? Maybe I'm being overly cautious?

Cheers,

Gene

walter23 · Mar 3, 2008

Gene_Laughter said:
After drying for a couple of days the ink doesn't transfer to the matt board.

I have never had "yellow foam," or any foam, in my bleach/tan brew? :confused:

Are you mixing the bleach chemicals with distilled water? My bleach is a clear emerald green liquid. Is your pot dichromate a 1% solution - 30 ml to a liter? Your description leads me to think that something is amiss? Maybe I'm being overly cautious?

Cheers,

Gene

I didn't use distilled water, but if it's still cloudy when I make dilutions I was planning to acidify it just a bit with vinnegar.

Foam was a bit of a misnomer, I just mean when I was vigorously stirring it to dissolve the Cu(II)SO4, the bubbles that formed were kind of yellow. No foam.

If it doesn't work I'll go to the trouble of getting some distilled H2O.

Gene_Laughter · Mar 3, 2008

ok - good luck!!!

Gene

walter23 · Mar 4, 2008

I looked at the stock solution today and something (looks like the dichromate, it's orange coloured) precipitated out overnight. I guess I might have to add the acid. My stock sol'n is 800ml total volume, with 50 grams each of KBr and CuSO4, and 2.5 grams of pot. dichromate. The actual recipe from the book I bought called for 10mls of sulfuric acid and then water up to 800mls, but I didn't have any acid. I can probably snag some from a lab down the hall from my work tomorrow, so we'll see if I can get the dichromate to stay dissolved that way. I don't think the dilution from adding acid will make too much difference to the effectiveness; the book I had said you could try dilutions from the stock sol'n of anywhere from 1:5 to 1:10 for bleaching & tanning, so I gather it doesn't have to be 100% exact... anyway we'll see.

Might end up having to buy pure water afterall.

I'm very excited to finally get started on this. I was buying the chemicals in October but just couldn't get it all together to spend the time on it until this week

Gene_Laughter · Mar 4, 2008

Hi Walter, I don't use acid in my bleach mixture. It's not necessary if one uses distilled water. The cost of distilled water is not a factor if one considers the time invested in inking prints. All of the nitty-gritty of preparing a matrix for inking is necessary, yet straight forward grunt-work IMO. The real test (and fun) is when one puts a bromoil brush in their hand!

Good luck and cheers!

Gene

walter23 · Mar 7, 2008

The sulfuric acid worked very well; got the dichromate dissolved back into solution and made it clear and emerald (instead of cloudy). Bleached my prints nicely, we'll see how well they take ink. I could swear I saw some texture on the paper from slightly swollen highlights as they hung to dry, so I'm optimistic.

I didn't have access to any reasonably dilute grade of the sulfuric acid and ended up using highly concentrated acid instead (talked a guy in a lab I know into giving me a few milliliters in a glass vial). Just a word of warning to anybody else reading this thread: don't underplay the part of the MSDS that warns about using extreme caution when diluting the stuff! I remembered "add acid to water, not water to acid" from my undergrad chem labs, but underestimated just how exothermic the reaction is. It makes a ton of heat, enough to boil water instantly (ie, explode). Luckily I was mixing it in an erlenmeyer flask and in small amounts, so none of the resultant boil-up splashed into my face... but yeah. Caution is necessary! And good ventilation (lots of fumes).

Anyway I'll be inking one up tomorrow. Wish me luck

Gene_Laughter · Mar 8, 2008

Anyway I'll be inking one up tomorrow. Wish me luck

You have now crossed the threshold from science to art and will be in the twilight zone of bromoil. In this strange land there are no pat answers. No 1-2-3, a-b-c.

Good luck and please post your results.

A few words of advice:

Bleach a test print that's exposed as follows: 1/4 at 150% of normal exposure. I/4 at 200% of normal exposure. 1/4 at 250% of normal exposure and one exposure at 300% of normal exposure. Ink up the test print and reiview your results.

Your ink should be much stiffer than you think it should be!

Cheers,

Gene

Gene_Laughter · Mar 8, 2008

BTW, the full-size over-exposed test print I referred to is a one-time procedure - to determine the darkness range you should print for the paper you are using, developer strength, inking methodology, etc. After establishing a general range for printing a "dark print" for bleaching, you can fine tune this in the future with smaller test strips.

Cheers,

Gene

walter23 · Mar 8, 2008

Funny, I was just thinking last night that I should have been doing exactly that (a test print).

walter23 · Mar 8, 2008

Ugh, muddy negative images. Probably should order some easier paper than this ilford MG IV matte.

Gene_Laughter · Mar 8, 2008

The pre-bleached "dark prints" should be muddy and dark! Otherwise you'll lose the highlight details in the inking stage.

Gene

Gene_Laughter · Mar 8, 2008

walter23 said:
Ugh, muddy negative images. Probably should order some easier paper than this ilford MG IV matte.

I missed the phrase "negative images" on the first reading. Why do you have negative images on the Ilford paper? I'm lost

Gene

walter23 · Mar 8, 2008

I mean when I started inking, the highlights were taking up ink faster than the shadows and I got kind of a muddy negative image appearing. I read in an old bromoil book just now that I may have been using ink that was too soft, but I think it's not swelling enough as well. I have both 1796 and 1803 ink and I can't remember now which one I was trying with (it was the one recommended in Derek Watkins' book, I think the softer of the two).

Gene_Laughter · Mar 8, 2008

There are soooo many directions in bromoil and so much differing advice! Usually reversal in inking has to do with faulty chemistry. Most inks are too soft when new and/or straight from the can and need modification and stiffening. I'm bowing out from this dialog now as I don't know where you've been, so to speak, or the direction you're headed and don't wish to add to your confusion! If you're following a course set by Derick Watkins, fine. He knows bromoil. Stay on the course and do exactly as he says until you have reached the level of being able to ink successful prints.

Cheers, good luck and hang tough!

Gene

walter23 · Mar 8, 2008

Thanks Gene, I appreciate the discussion. I went back and tried soaking with hot water (80C) and using the stiffer ink and I had some success, but I have a long way to go. Anyway, thanks again.

-Walter

Gene_Laughter · Mar 9, 2008

One last post on this and my 2 cents. I would toss the bleach. Start over, use distilled water for the bleach/tanning solution. NO acid!!! Stiffen the ink considerably, stop referring to old, vintage books at this point as they deal with different materials than we have today, slow down, plot a course and stay on it! The above is probably worth what it cost you! :>)

Cheers, Gene

Barry S · Mar 9, 2008

Gene-- What do recommend as a good ink stiffener? Magnesium carbonate? Chalk?

walter23 · Mar 9, 2008

Gene_Laughter said:
One last post on this and my 2 cents. I would toss the bleach. Start over, use distilled water for the bleach/tanning solution. NO acid!!! Stiffen the ink considerably, stop referring to old, vintage books at this point as they deal with different materials than we have today, slow down, plot a course and stay on it! The above is probably worth what it cost you! :>)

Cheers, Gene

I suppose, given your portfolio, that it would be in my best interest to heed your advice... so I'll be buying some distilled water. Thanks for the help!

Drying & Mounting bromoils

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