Paper wash questions

[NB23]

I’ve been printing extensively for years with a single goal: that my prints be archival. I’ve lost an insane amount of time in the darkroom and the last thing I want is to open up a bag of prints only to find them deteriorated. The price of that happening would be too high!

(Actually, anecdote: I stored a lot of my most prized prints in an extra safe environment, all stacked, only to find out that a dryer duct passing above the bagged prints was leaking a few drops per drying cycle onto the pile of bags. The drops slid over the bags and entered the weakest bag, at the bottom. Drop by drop, year after year, the damage was done. The bag was completely filled with mold and the prints destroyed. All the rest were fine except one that was humid inside, but it could have been catastrophic. Thousands of hours and dollars would have been lost. Luckily, it was only one bag of fine 16x20 prints. I spent a lot of time opening all the other bags and checking everything. Was just a huuuuge undertaking that I didn’t need and I don’t want to go through the bags ever again. I just want the prints to be secure and archived).

Ok, onto my questions:

Question A:
I sometimes print 25 fiber prints that I leave soaking in a water bath, after fixing, before I move on to washing them. The still water holding bath lasts for up to 3 hours. I’m not sure this is a good idea because the fixer trapped in the prints is not being diluted enough to my liking.

When I have finished the printing, I empty the holding bath, rinse the prints for a few minutes by leaving a running hose into the tray.

I then quickly direct-tone all the prints in Viradon polysulfide. Quickly enough for a warm tinge that I like, and not too long for the stench to kill the everybody in the building. I also believe the toning helps with archivability.

I then proceed with hypo clear for 5-10 minutes, and then wash for at least 1 hour.

But most of the time, after the hypo clearing bath, I let the prints sit overnight inside the printwasher in clean water. I will then proceed to wash them for 2-3 hours while I’m printing the next 25 11x-4 fiber prints, on the next day.

What’s your take on this?


Question B:
I wash 2 prints per slot, back to back. Big prints get thoroughly washed and they don’t stick together. There seems to be a good waterflow in between the prints inside the slots. Hovever, 5x7 prints stick their backs together.

A residual hypo check confirms that the emulsion side is well washed, but the back shows a stain.

My question is this: I store about 50 prints per bag. Obviously, the backsides are stacked on top of the emulsion sides. Will the residual hypo on the back side of the prints end up affecting the emulsion, over time, just by touching it?
Causing deterioration? Discoloration? Fading? Staining? What can I expect in 30 years when I open one of the bags?

 

[Sirius Glass]

Question A: I do the same thing.

 

[john_s]

.....A residual hypo check confirms that the emulsion side is well washed, but the back shows a stain..

I haven't done the appropriate tests, but I would be concerned by the back of the print test showing insufficient washing (if I'm reading this correctly).

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I’ve been printing extensively for years with a single goal: that my prints be archival. I’ve lost an insane amount of time in the darkroom and the last thing I want is to open up a bag of prints only to find them deteriorated. The price of that happening would be too high!

(Actually, anecdote: I stored a lot of my most prized prints in an extra safe environment, all stacked, only to find out that a dryer duct passing above the bagged prints was leaking a few drops per drying cycle onto the pile of bags. The drops slid over the bags and entered the weakest bag, at the bottom. Drop by drop, year after year, the damage was done. The bag was completely filled with mold and the prints destroyed. All the rest were fine except one that was humid inside, but it could have been catastrophic. Thousands of hours and dollars would have been lost. Luckily, it was only one bag of fine 16x20 prints. I spent a lot of time opening all the other bags and checking everything. Was just a huuuuge undertaking that I didn’t need and I don’t want to go through the bags ever again. I just want the prints to be secure and archived).

Ok, onto my questions:

Question A:
I sometimes print 25 fiber prints that I leave soaking in a water bath, after fixing, before I move on to washing them. The still water holding bath lasts for up to 3 hours. I’m not sure this is a good idea because the fixer trapped in the prints is not being diluted enough to my liking.

When I have finished the printing, I empty the holding bath, rinse the prints for a few minutes by leaving a running hose into the tray.

I then quickly direct-tone all the prints in Viradon polysulfide. Quickly enough for a warm tinge that I like, and not too long for the stench to kill the everybody in the building. I also believe the toning helps with archivability.

I then proceed with hypo clear for 5-10 minutes, and then wash for at least 1 hour.

But most of the time, after the hypo clearing bath, I let the prints sit overnight inside the printwasher in clean water. I will then proceed to wash them for 2-3 hours while I’m printing the next 25 11x-4 fiber prints, on the next day.

What’s your take on this?


Question B:
I wash 2 prints per slot, back to back. Big prints get thoroughly washed and they don’t stick together. There seems to be a good waterflow in between the prints inside the slots. Hovever, 5x7 prints stick their backs together.

A residual hypo check confirms that the emulsion side is well washed, but the back shows a stain.

My question is this: I store about 50 prints per bag. Obviously, the backsides are stacked on top of the emulsion sides. Will the residual hypo on the back side of the prints end up affecting the emulsion, over time, just by touching it?
Causing deterioration? Discoloration? Fading? Staining? What can I expect in 30 years when I open one of the bags?

question A and B. I think, You are pretty safe that way;just keep your final prints in archival boxes in the dark dry and cool!

 

[logan2z]

Re: Question A, which paper are you using? I used to leave a batch of prints in a water bath for several hours while I was making additional prints, but I found that this lead to emulsion flaking at the print edges. The paper was Ilford Multigrade Classic Fiber glossy. I spoke to Ilford about this and the advised me that even 5-6 hours in water was too hard on the emulsion and it could be damaged. I've started to wash prints as I complete them to avoid this issue and it has never recurred.

You don't mention any issues with emulsion flaking after a night of soaking so I assume that you haven't experienced this sort of thing, but that does seem like an awfully long time to leave paper in water. Is an overnight soak really necessary?

 

[138S]

Question A: Question B:

I'd say that your workflow is in the safe side.

You rised an interesting concern, that water with contaminated fixer may penetrate in the base and later it can be difficult to remove it from there... well seen !!! probably the amount involved should be very low, and later you have an additional extensive wash.

Anyway let me tell the workflow I'm considering:

> Alkaline fixer: no hypo bath required. It washes more easily, and no nasty surprises when bleaching prior to toning.

> Double bath fixer: the second bath is always fresh (also no silver in it), allowing to adjust short fixing times without allowing dirt to penetrate much in the base.

> Fast, powerful, washing, then long time bath in distilled.

Final long bath (can be reused) in distilled or ionized water. If we weight dry and wet paper then the difference tells how much water per m2 takes. Form the salt content in our tap water (it can even be 500mg/L) we know how much tap water salt will remain in the paper after dried, then we can check the contribution in the max salt content in the LE500.

Nothing new, photopaper with salts or in acidic environement (chem residue, mounting glue or condensation) ends with a yellowing... For an LE500 job this is a concern... Even an a bit acidic glue for the mounting can end in problems, and even proficient artists have had pitfalls with yellowing even when using the finest materials.

Anyway, IMO, the less time we have the paper in the chem, the better. If we allow much dirt to penetrate in the base then it may be quite difficult to remove it from there.

 

[George Collier]

I agree with 138s on alkaline fixer, double bath, rotating the second to the first when the first is exhausted. I then go to the wash (I don't tone every time. only periodically and only prints that are keepers or for exhibit).
I, too, use a slotted washer (Gravity Works brand from the 90's), but I put the prints face to face in the slot - because - they always curl to the emulsion side, so the emulsions sides will not come together. Also, the paper base is the side that needs most washing, as your test shows. The water flows at a bit less than 1 quart per minute, temperature controlled to that of the printing chems (cold water wash isn't as effective). I don't really time it, just about 3 hours. A long time is more effective than high exchange rate. You are leaching or soaking it from the paper. I don't empty the washer, it stays full most of the time. I empty and clean the washer only maybe once a year, unless I don't print for a few weeks.
I then pull them up and out, two at a time, but from neighboring slots, so that I pull them out back to back, matching up the top corners before withdrawing them, then hang them that way, by the top corners. The natural slack in the drying line provides enough of an angle that the water drips off of a corner and does not gather in a bead along the bottom edge. They need flattening afterwards, but most methods do.

 

[NB23]

Thanks for the answers, guys.

I do exactly as George, except that i don’t wash face to face. All the rest is pretty much the same (and I always tone).

I mostly use ilford MG fibre glossy these days.

I let prints sit overnight in the washer filled with clean water because my i run out of time and because I figure it’s good for a thorough wash.

One thing happened the other day: terrible terrible stains on the back of a series of prints, the stain is from Viradon toner. I always rinse the prints that have stayed in the holding bath before direct-toning, but not that time. I believe the residual fixer had a reaction with the toner, same as will happen with selenium and residual, except that the stains are huge. I washed the prints thoroughly after the toning, so I believe the prints are archival (and ugly from the back).

 

[Doremus Scudder]

Here's my take on your practices. I'll go through one at at time and offer my (informed) opinion.

First, print storage: Storing fine prints in any old bag certainly isn't best practice. My mounted prints are stored in museum-quality boxes with acid-free interleaving paper. Unmounted prints are also in boxes. Some are in old paper boxes with interleaving at each end to protect them, but the majority are in museum-quality clamshell boxes. And, they get stored in a cool, dry place (nowhere near a drier vent...). Still, if you're using good-quality polyethylene bags and storing the prints in a dry area, you may be fine. It's the humidity-trapping quality of plastic that is your enemy here so storage conditions are important. And, do make sure you're using bags made of materials that don't off-gas or transfer contaminants to your prints. Vinyl is not your friend.

Question A:
A water-holding tray is not all that bad, but a running water tray is better. You just need a trickle. Sacrifice a tray and drill 3-4 small holes along the bottom on the "downhill" side of the tray (mine is on the short side). Then have a hose dripping into the opposite end of the tray. Adjust the flow rate with tape over the holes. Then you've got a "pre-wash" tray that drains away fixer-laden water slowly. Since you put prints into the holding tray one-at-a-time, the bulk of the carried-over fix gets drained away before the next print goes in.

Toning to get a partial tone change is what I do (in selenium, though), which, however, won't give you all that much protection. Don't count on it to preserve you prints. Good fixation and washing is the best bet here.

While I'm on that subject, you don't mention your fixing regime. The biggest enemy by far to print stability is improper fixation. If you don't use two-bath fixing for fiber-base prints, your capacity for optimum permanence should not exceed 10 8x10-inch prints per liter of fixer or equivalent. Note that the "40 8x10 prints per liter" you see recommended by Ilford and others as a capacity for their fixers is NOT the capacity for optimum permanence; it's the "commercial-use" standard, which is less stringent. Using two-bath fixation increases the capacity to approx. 40 8x10s per liter of bath one (note that you have a liter of bath two as well, so the capacity is not quadrupled, but only doubled. Still that's worth it IM-HO just to keep from mixing fix so often). I've written about this a lot here, so search the fora for more info if you're interested.

And, test for proper fixation (residual silver) along with the wash test for residual hypo using either the Kodak ST-1 test or the similar test using Kodak Rapid Selenium Toner 1+9. This latter is my preferred method since I have KRST on hand all the time.

Hypo-clear for 10 minutes is my standard (Ilford's recommendation; Kodak times are shorter) and then a minimum 60-minute wash, like you.

Leaving your prints to soak overnight is not all that great... If your emulsion is not flaking off or frilling then maybe you can get by with it, but the real problem may show up later when you mount the prints. Long soaks can degrade the paper base and cause dimensional changes. If you are getting good results and having no problems, maybe things are alright for you, but I sure wouldn't leave prints in water for 8+ hours, especially after they'd been wet for a few hours before that... Certainly, you're leeching out all the optical brighteners, which, however, is not necessarily a negative thing; I wash my prints for that 60+ minutes just to get rid of most of the optical brighteners because I think they make the print look too artificial. But, you should know about that.

Question B:
An archival wash shouldn't take more than 60 minutes or so. The fact that you are washing for an hour, letting your prints soak overnight and then washing them for 2-3 more hours and then still getting a stain on the back of your prints suggests that your back-to-back method of washing is not working. However, the directions I have for both the Kodak ST-1 and HT-2 tests for residual silver and hypo, respectively, don't mention placing the test solution on the back of the print. So, you should really test to see.

Wash a batch with just one print in each slot; wash for 60 minutes in running water that changes the complete volume of your washer every five minutes and then do your test and see if you still have stain. Note that the stain evaluation needs to be done after two or three minutes. If you wait longer than that, a stain will develop (assuming you're using the HT-2 test); that's normal (and why you shouldn't test the image area or the area behind the image on a "keeper" print; test borders and/or a test print that you run through the fixer last just for that purpose).

Now back to print storage: If the backs of your prints are not well-washed and there is a lot of residual hypo in them, and they are stacked on top of the emulsion side of other prints, the fixer can carry across and damage the print below. Stacking well-washed prints is fine, but a contaminated print on top of a well-washed one is just not good.

Note that you can always re-fix and re-wash prints that have been questionably processed.

Hope this helps,

Doremus

 

[NB23]

Yes, i use the 2-bath method (1:9 dilution, ilford hypam), each tray containing 2 Liters of 1:9 fixer.” I go 20-25 11x14fb prints per session, which converts to 40-50 8x10 prints per 2 liters of fixer, or 20-25 per liter. I’m happy with the 20 8x10 capacity per litre, which is considered archival per Ilford’s litterature.

I keep all my prints in the thick black bags in which the paper originally came.

 

[NB23]

I keep my prints in the original thick black bags in which the paper is sold.

question A and B. I think, You are pretty safe that way;just keep your final prints in archival boxes in the dark dry and cool!

e

 

[NB23]

Yes, I’m going to have to switch to alkali fixer in the future after the pandemic, once I run out of my present stock. I feel that even though I’m doing everything by the book, there is always a level of uncertainty.

I'd say that your workflow is in the safe side.

You rised an interesting concern, that water with contaminated fixer may penetrate in the base and later it can be difficult to remove it from there... well seen !!! probably the amount involved should be very low, and later you have an additional extensive wash.

Anyway let me tell the workflow I'm considering:

> Alkaline fixer: no hypo bath required. It washes more easily, and no nasty surprises when bleaching prior to toning.

> Double bath fixer: the second bath is always fresh (also no silver in it), allowing to adjust short fixing times without allowing dirt to penetrate much in the base.

> Fast, powerful, washing, then long time bath in distilled.

Final long bath (can be reused) in distilled or ionized water. If we weight dry and wet paper then the difference tells how much water per m2 takes. Form the salt content in our tap water (it can even be 500mg/L) we know how much tap water salt will remain in the paper after dried, then we can check the contribution in the max salt content in the LE500.

Nothing new, photopaper with salts or in acidic environement (chem residue, mounting glue or condensation) ends with a yellowing... For an LE500 job this is a concern... Even an a bit acidic glue for the mounting can end in problems, and even proficient artists have had pitfalls with yellowing even when using the finest materials.

Anyway, IMO, the less time we have the paper in the chem, the better. If we allow much dirt to penetrate in the base then it may be quite difficult to remove it from there.

 

[NB23]

I know that the emulsion starts to fragilize at the 48 hour mark and then it simply starts to desintegrate and eventually wipes out completely.

I’ve made tests on this and my conclusion was very consistant, at a certain hour point the emulsion was breaking down. It’s a long time ago and I remember the 50-something hour mark. This being said, 48 hours in temperatures of 20c and lower would be the absolute longest acceptable soaking time. And absolutely no squeegee.

24 -30 hours soaking in cool water is good, no worries there, as far as the emulsion integrity is concerned.

Yes, a few sheets show some flaking at the very edges but this happens in warm water, I don’t remember this happening in 20c water...

Re: Question A, which paper are you using? I used to leave a batch of prints in a water bath for several hours while I was making additional prints, but I found that this lead to emulsion flaking at the print edges. The paper was Ilford Multigrade Classic Fiber glossy. I spoke to Ilford about this and the advised me that even 5-6 hours in water was too hard on the emulsion and it could be damaged. I've started to wash prints as I complete them to avoid this issue and it has never recurred.

You don't mention any issues with emulsion flaking after a night of soaking so I assume that you haven't experienced this sort of thing, but that does seem like an awfully long time to leave paper in water. Is an overnight soak really necessary?

 

[138S]

Yes, I’m going to have to switch to alkali fixer in the future after the pandemic, once I run out of my present stock. I feel that even though I’m doing everything by the book, there is always a level of uncertainty.

Let me tell something about that switch...

Reportedly many acidic fixers are designed to use the acidic stop bath carried with the print to keep the fixer in shape. With alkaline fixers that acid carried from the stop bath is not benfical and it may shorten fixer yield. IMO we have several possibilities...

> doing nothing special, alkaline fixer is well buffered

> using acid stop but checking the alkaline fixer pH and correcting it if necessay.

> using acid stop but performing a fast water bath/rinse to remove acid from the print before we throw the print in the fixer

> using water stop bath.

With a water stop bath we require extra care because if we open lights too soon then newly exposed crystals may develop when print is in the fixer ans fixer is an alkaline accelerator for the development...

Still, alkaline fixer have many advantages for FB paper, IMO for RC this is a least concern the fixer kind we use and washing RC is straight anyway.

 

[NB23]

Yes, every change comes with its own new set of problems...

Let me tell something about that switch...

Reportedly many acidic fixers are designed to use the acidic stop bath carried with the print to keep the fixer in shape. With alkaline fixers that acid carried from the stop bath is not benfical and it may shorten fixer yield. IMO we have several possibilities...

> doing nothing special, alkaline fixer is well buffered

> using acid stop but checking the alkaline fixer pH and correcting it if necessay.

> using acid stop but performing a fast water bath/rinse to remove acid from the print before we throw the print in the fixer

> using water stop bath.

With a water stop bath we require extra care because if we open lights too soon then newly exposed crystals may develop when print is in the fixer ans fixer is an alkaline accelerator for the development...

Still, alkaline fixer have many advantages for FB paper, IMO for RC this is a least concern the fixer kind we use and washing RC is straight anyway.

 

[mshchem]

I don't like leaving prints in water overnight. I've got a ridiculous amount of equipment that I've accumulated over the decades. As I move prints through the process, I have a couple of assets. I start with a quick rinse in a tray. Next, my holding place is a circular washer, that I use as a quick wash, sometimes prints sit here for a couple hours. Next if I have a bunch of large prints I have a 50 year old Calumet Rocking print washer. This print washer is immense, I only use when processing batches of large prints, after this I use one of three of the acrylic washers, I'm not a pro, so I bring these washers out when needed, I never leave water standing in anything.

One trick that I have found is I have a squeegee board. This came out of a commercial lab, 1/2 " poly propylene (you could make one with a piece of scrap Formica counter top etc.) The squeegee board allows you to "wring out" wash water between steps, lay the print face down and squeegee the back of the prints, this removes 80% of the water/chemical in the fiber base.

Final step is 3x, 10-20 minutes in my recirculating washers.

I make sure to squeegee again on the clean board. Finally I dry on a Pakomax belt dryer. I keep the belts clean. Pako still sells the belts, they aren't cheap, but in 4 minutes you get a nice, flat dry print. I store prints in flat files (mine came from a drafting department ) or archival boxes.

I think I may be practicing some sort of religion or quackery here. Obviously this is very involved. I don't like taking chances.

I use a lot of Kodak Hypo Clearing Agent along the way before and after toning (selenium mostly, some gold )

I also keep everything between 68 - 72 °F through every step. Too warm and you get swollen soft emulsion, too cold and washing is not effective.

I never wash 2 prints in the same slot. If there was any doubt this proves I'm crazy.

If I was to recommend one thing it would be a stout squeegee board, it serves the same purpose as the wringer rollers on old washing machines. It removes contaminated water from the swollen fiber base.