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Lith and stop bath

David Lingham

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I read an article recently that suggested when lith printing to use a double strength stop bath. To more effectively stop the development. Does anyone know if there are there any disadvantages to this?
 

Bob Carnie

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David
I use normal , fresh stop when lith printing, so that the image stops immediately and does not travel, creating streaking patterns.
I do not think that you need to double the strength, but fresh is good
Bob
I read an article recently that suggested when lith printing to use a double strength stop bath. To more effectively stop the development. Does anyone know if there are there any disadvantages to this?
 

tim rudman

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I read an article recently that suggested when lith printing to use a double strength stop bath. To more effectively stop the development. Does anyone know if there are there any disadvantages to this?

David
Fresh is perfectly adequate, as Bob says. Extra strong isn't necessary and potentially might cause problems with some papers. This used to be the case with the long gone Sterling lith (as I found when trying to see if extra strong would help) but I don't use over-strength stop at all now so don't know about current papers, other than to say it isn't necessary. Just don't rely on well used stop.
Tim
 

Rich Ullsmith

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David, something I have found useful is to use cold water bath to stop development. It took a little practice to learn to pull the print a bit earlier. It continues development in the water, but not much. The great advantage (besides having one less tray) is you can compare density against a previous print, and put it back in the developer if necessary. The downside is it does take time to clear the developer from the paper base. With an alkaline fixer, it does not appear to affect its capacity.
 

tim rudman

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Actually Rich, even with a stop bath you can rinse off the stop bath and go back into developer. We use this technique quite a bit on my workshops where we use 2-bath lith processes.
Tim