Gum-over platinum article on Unblinkingeye.com

[clay]

FYI, the ever-busy Ed Buffalo has kindly loaded a quickie gumover platinum guide that I wrote a while back onto his website. Thanks Ed!

http://www.unblinkingeye.com
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[rogein]

Good write up Clay. I wanted to ask - what is the reason behind resizing the 'wet' pt print?

 

[clay]

I size both wet and dry prints, but if you size it wet, you can save some time since it only needs to dry once instead of twice (once after platinum, then again after the sizing step) It also seems to soak into the body of the paper a little better and have less of a tendency to get the 'sparklies'

 

[shinn]

Clay,

What is the purpose of the alcohol? Something like that in my darkroom could only lead to problems and memory loss. I have diluted the mix with distilled water to smooth out the coating and it seemed to work well for me but I wonder if the alcohol would work better? Or is it more of a surfactant and aid in blending the solutions.

Thanks for the article; I’ve been trying to dial in my gum printing for that very purpose.

Happy Days

 

[clay]

I find that the alcohol helps smooth out the coating mix. It is not strictly necessary, but it seems to work for me. Plus, visitors to my darkroom always raise their eyebrows when they see the bottle of Everclear on the shelf next to the other chemicals. Sort of makes you feel like Gene Smith or something.