Foma Silver Gelatin Lith Prints

[Carnie Bob]

I love to hand coat my work these days using tri colour over palladium and have spent the better part of the last 6 years concentrating all my efforts. I just saw a couple of prints
on FB that were handcoated silver emulsionn on fabrinio paper using moresch developer to create the images. I am very impressed with them I must say. Anyone here doing somewhat the same
method of printing and willing to share their ideas, problems and successes with this type of printing. I make digital negatives up to 30 x 40 inches and I am thinking this would be the way to go and combine
gum bichromate colour layering on top.... I notice the price of this box of emulsion is very expensive and wondering what options are easily available.

 

[Daniel Stuefer]

I do like to lith print, usually using fomatone, and have tried to lith my handmade emulsions, but no luck with those.
I cannot confirm if the foma liquid emulsion would lith or not (fomabrom doesn't).

There are also other commercial liquid emulsions - some from rollei, and Adox' polywarmtone (and maybe some other as well which I don't know about).

I haven't tried it yet, but I expect Adox PWT will lith nicely (as the original Forte PWT seems to have been an absolutely wonderful lith paper, from accounts online and the two 50x60cm sheets I had to play with a few years back).

An issue with lith printing handcoated emulsions might be that they are not as resistant as commercial papers, so the emulsions might not survive lith processing by themselves. My handmade emulsions do survive it, probably due to the amount of hard gelatin I put into them (but I haven't really tested that). Coating method might also matter.

As for general problems with lith printing, you can look at the documents published by Moersch on their site (the developer they sell is called "easylith").

 

[koraks]

I cannot confirm if the foma liquid emulsion would lith or not (fomabrom doesn't).

If it doesn't lith directly, indirect lith can be an option. Overexpose several stops, develop normally, fix, wash, bleach back with a ferricyanide bleach with a halide of your choice (chloride would be my choice), then lith develop. The advantage is that the actual lith development can be done in room light. Many papers / emulsions that don't lith 'straight' will lith OK in second pass. It adds a lot of work of course.

I expect Adox PWT will lith nicely

Yes I'd expect so, but haven't tried it either.