Kodabromide Light Weight paper

[Mike Té]

I recently acquired a sealed roll of Kodabromide Light Weight paper (40" x 100'), which tested to have no fogging.
It's a very light, delicate and slightly translucent paper.
A friend showed me some examples from his box of 8.5 x 11.5 and I was impressed by it.
I've understood that it was used as a way to insert thin, light images into some publications.
My question: what the heck can you do with such a large roll of such light paper?
Could this have been used for billboards in the 50s-60s?

 

[Paul Howell]

Rolls were used for murals, not so much billboards which were printed.

 

[MarkS]

There were mechanized easels and dispensers that held long rolls of paper for mass-production printing. And of course processing machinery for those long rolls. Kodak made a lot of very specialized products, back in the day.
The logos on your box suggest a production date pre-1972, so before my time anyway. "A" surface paper was gone by 1990 or so; I suppose RC papers took its market. I'd try printing on it; wet handling may require some practice, but you may well get some beautiful results.

 

[john_s]

I used it in the 1970s, sheets not a roll. Before the days of everyone having a computer printer the thin paper was great for inserting photos into documents, as mentioned by the post above. It had a full scale. In sheets it was not difficult to handle despite it being thin. I was sorry when it was discontinued. Then single weight paper disappeared, then lots more.

 

[ic-racer]

I'm surprised it is not fogged. How did you test it?

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

I'm surprised it is not fogged.

Really old paper incorporated a small amount of cadmium and doesn't seem to fog. EPA removed cadmium from the paper (it wasn't the cadmium in the paper so much as the manufacturing process that was the problem). Right after the cadmium was removed the paper seemed to fog if you looked at it cross-eyed; eventually they figured out how to make long-lived paper that didn't fog, although it still isn't a patch on the old stuff.

Things aren't as good as they used to be. They never were.

 

[Don_ih]

Assuming you can get good density out of the paper, you can mount it. I have Kodabromide lightweight - not as thin as yours - and it really improves when you mount it. You're lucky it's grade 3 - if it was grade 1 or 2, it would probably be muddy. Whatever they did to make those grades, they just don't hold up as well as 3-5.

 

[gone]

They were still hand painting billboards in the US into the 70's and 80's. Those would last a lot longer than the new stuff and had better color, but not every painter could paint those things. They basically worked from a small sketch held in their hand.

If you plan on wet printing that paper, I'd try it w/ several sheets stuck together in the hope it would hold up better going from one tray to another. No tongs, that's for sure.

 

[Don_ih]

The main problem with developing will be the paper rolling around itself in the liquid. It'll probably want to be a tube.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

Assuming you can get good density out of the paper, you can mount it...

I have a large quantity of single-weight Azo. Mounting it with Colormount or similar results in tissue's warm tone infiltrating print high values. In order to keep them white, I go through the effort of mounting with Fusion 4000 instead.

 

[busrider]

I used to use this paper grade 3 by the case. It is a wonderful paper