How to fix a stupid drying mistake

Hi everyone,

Here's another stupid mistake that I'll be sure not to make again: after a couple of hours of my negatives drying over the bathtub I thought they were sufficiently dry (I was in a rush). Mercifully the emulsion side of the negs was dry, but not the back of the negatives.

I cut them up, noticed they were a bit sticky and placed them in between two sheets of pergament paper (without pressing them). As a result the paper stuck to it on the bottom side, and when I removed the negatives it left some white traces (as when we fail to remove the price tag on a book). I used a friendly price tag to remove gently most of the white fibers, but there remains some kind of light stain, and of course the negatives are generally dirtier than anything I've seen before.

Any idea how to fix this? Would some solvent like alcohol help me wipe the bottom part of the negative or is it going to ruin it?

Any ideas welcome...

Many thanks,

Michael

I'd try a longish soak in water with slightly more wetting agent than normal and periodic examination.

pentaxuser

Re-shoot would be best. Or, if cannot, resoak, salvage, and retouch.

rinse, gentle rubbing with finger while wet and perhaps some foto-flow to nudge off, re-dry, pray.

summicron1 said:

rinse, gentle rubbing with finger while wet and perhaps some foto-flow to nudge off, re-dry, pray.

Click to expand...

+1

+ another on a rinse and photo-flo soak. That will probably take care of it if you're patient and let the paper get thoroughly wet.
That assumes you didn't also introduce some adhesive from the sticker you were trying to lift the paper with.
If that is the case, I'd soak and try to get the paper off then dry and attack the glue with pec pads and film cleaner.

You guys are awesome---and it's great to have a rather unanimous answer, and on this forum

Many, many thanks to all! I'll try this at the end of the week and will let you know what could be salvaged.

summicron1 said:

rinse, gentle rubbing with finger while wet and perhaps some foto-flow to nudge off, re-dry, pray.

Click to expand...

+1 more. Got lucky once.