Need some advice with Ruscombe's Herschel paper.

Hi All!

I’m hoping you can answer a question on Ruscombe Mill's Herschel paper. I bought a few packs of the paper around 2017 to try it and I’ve only tried it a few times, each time I was disappointed. I just tried again today, and given that I read so much about Ruscombe’s papers, I’m left wondering what I’m doing wrong.

I’m mixing Na2 palladium for my prints and with Herschel, each time the result I get has dismal DMax. It’s grey! I've tried the following:

• with and without tween20
• with and without PVA
• brush coating
• glass rod coating
• test strips, both short exposure and extended exposure
• extended development in potassium oxalate

... and each time, grey blacks. The highlights are lovely but there’s just no blacks. It’s almost like it’s solarized, but test strips show it just never reaches a decent black. Could Ruscombe have made a bad batch?

Here’s a pic with the wet print... see all that grey? It's supposed to be black.



Even with the added native contrast from the camera phone, you can see it looks dark grey. A print on HPR or COT-320 from the same chemistry gives me great blacks. Do you folks have any thoughts why I just can’t achieve a nice black with this paper?

I’d use HPR, but I just have all this Herschel and it would be nice to be able to use it.

Thanks in advance!

-Jesse-

A couple of more things I can think of assuming that the low Dmax is a result of sensitizer going too far into the paper: 1) additional sizing with gelatin or starch. and 2) fumed silica treatment.

:Niranjan.

Have you tried contacting the maker of the paper for their input?

Thank you for your suggestions! @nmp, I'll try sizing. Given that gelatin sizing doesn't appear to react well with pure platinum, I'll look around other options.

@Alan9940, Ruscombe hasn't been great at answering emails, so I haven't had much luck with info from the manufacturer.