Where do you guys get bottles for storing stock solution? I've been trying to track down a 100ml brown bottle but no luck, other than a plastic cough syrup bottle the guy at the drugstore gave me. If only I still worked in a university lab...
Thanks Katharine; appreciate the help.
For now I'll assume my first layer is okay and just try to sort out the second layer issue. I probably just made a bad batch of gum / sensitizer, it didn't seem to brush on right, and even a test print with just one layer of that batch didn't seem right to me (took a much longer exposure than normal).
Should find a brown bottle and mix up a bigger batch of sensitizer to keep it consistent and make proportions easier to control. Does the dissolved dichromate solution last any reasonable length of time?
IME, sizing the paper will make this problem as well as others go away. FAEW is an excellent paper for printing gum.
Walter, FAEW is an acronym for Fabriano Artistico Extra White. (There's also FATW -> Fabriano Artistico Traditional White...)
BTW, I've just noticed your statement: "...Should find a brown bottle and mix up a bigger batch of sensitizer to keep it consistent and make proportions easier to control. Does the dissolved dichromate solution last any reasonable length of time?..."
I hope somebody has already posted a PM to you that you shouldn't mix gum/pigment and dichromate beforehand; you have to add dichromate right before coating. If not, the solution will definitely go bad. Quicker in high temperature / humidity and light levels, slower in low temperature / humidity and light levels. If you absolutely need to mix and store the coating solution beforehand (I can't think of a single reason for doing that BTW...), keep it away from light (especially daylight or any other light which substantial amnt. of UV) and keep it cool (in the refrigerator). Even kept in optimum conditions, I don't recommend storing the premixed coating solution more than 1-2 days. Gum isn't like cyanotype or vandyke / argyrotype where you directly use the stock sensitizer solution, you have to compound/mix the solution for each print individually. (Or at least for each - short - printing session!)
Loris, I think he meant just the dichromate solution...
... I did find that I could get good adhesion of the second layer by applying about double the normal exposure.
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