Is an archival print washer a must????

23mjm said:

Hummmmmmm indestructible----goooooood

Give me a cast iron cannon ball and a Q-tip, I'll break the cannon ball with the Q-tip

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I said: "under normal use".

Would I be hijacking this thread by asking for some sort of a poll as to how long do you normally wash your FB prints? I'd be interested in the final wash, after toning, any hypo removal etc. using an archival type of a washer at 20C or so.

rafal said:

Would I be hijacking this thread by asking for some sort of a poll as to how long do you normally wash your FB prints? I'd be interested in the final wash, after toning, any hypo removal etc. using an archival type of a washer at 20C or so.

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About an hour at room temp (after PermaWash), or longer if I get distracted.

Half an hour after using a hypo clearing agent at about 20C/68F.

rafal said:

Would I be hijacking this thread by asking for some sort of a poll as to how long do you normally wash your FB prints? I'd be interested in the final wash, after toning, any hypo removal etc. using an archival type of a washer at 20C or so.

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2 Hours minimum - my water is rarely 20C
With Hypo Clearing I cut it down to 60mins
Too long washes the brightener out of the paper - and it ends up looking greyish white rather than blue white with the brighteners
As almost everything in photography its another time v temperature question/answer
Martin

Is an archival print washer a must???? No, but an archivally washed print is.

A couple of extra things to consider. Archival washers have fully independant slots, so putting another print in the washer won't recontaminate the ones already in there. Therefore required wash time for each print is kept to a minimum which is good because if you leave in wash for too long, the more the print is likely to curl when it dries(fibre paper).
Do fish tanks do that for you?

And for fibre paper which will require a half hour or more washing, then an archival printer is a big help for time and convenience as well being "Archival".

But for RC paper which require much shorter wash times, the wash should be complete before you've got the next one ready to go in, so a tray should be perfectly fine because you can take out the previous one before putting the next one in.

Does that make sense....