Poor results with Palladium printing on Fabriano Artistico EW

[sdivot]

Hi,
Haven't posted in a while due to life, health, etc. Good to be back!
I'm having issues printing palladium on fabriano artistico extra white. I used to do do gumover palladium on this paper with no problem. As before, I did a presoak with oxalic acid. Coated as usual. The prints seems a bit weak, but that may be due to my using a digi-neg that was calibrated for Arches Platine.
The problem is that the print on fabriano artistico does not seem to clear. The highlights stay a brownish color.
I had changed from Kodak Hypoclear to a clearing bath using EDTA and Sodium Sulfite. So, as per Christine Anderson's excellent new book, I thought perhaps that method of clearing was too alkaline. So I bought some Heico Permawash. This is reported to be a very neutral clearing bath, and similar to Kodak Hypoclear.
Unfortunately, I'm still getting the same problem no matter which clearing bath I use.
Just to be sure, I tried printing on Arches Platine. It works great.
What am I missing? I assume that if I go back to Kodak Hypoclear, it would work again. But I'm not sure about that, since the Heico Permawash didn't fix the problem.
Any thoughts?
Steve
www.scdowellphoto.com

 

[artonpaper]

I have experimented a couple of times with Fabriano and found it to be less than desirable. For me, currently, the two most trouble free papers are COT 320 and Revere. I don't like pre-treating since it's just another place for things to go to wrong.

On the other hand, Richard Sullivan has said, regarding clearing problems, "longer, stronger, hotter." My take on that would be, try mixing the clearing bath stronger, leave the print in longer, and perhaps heating it up would also help.

Boy do I miss Crane's Platinotype.

Good luck.

Best,

Doug

 

[Loris Medici]

You may get better results by changing the acid in the pre-treatment step. More on this later, stay tuned - I have a friend with good news for all of us...

BTW, is it develop-out pd or print-out pd? If it's develop-out pd you may have problems with the ferric oxalate (FeOx) solution; to my knowing, aged FeOx solutions are prone to staining...

Regards,
Loris.

 

[Herzeleid]

I was subscribed to this thread, hoping to share the news It is ready, I can share it now.
An alternative acid pre-treatment which I believe works great with all siderotypes: (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

I guess it would help with your clearing problem. I recall Loris did not have any clearing problems with pop pd when he was using SA treated papers.

Regards
Serdar