Print dryer ruins my images :(

Hey everyone,

Just came home from a 12h Darkroom session where I produced quite a few nice prints that I'd like to give away, but a fair amount of them were ruined by our print dryer. Whenever I dry fiber prints We have a large fiber print dryer with a rolling drum and canvas, but I have experienced the same issues with my drum & canvas "ferrotyping" dryer at home as well. As per instructions I first squeegee the print and put it on the canvas. In the case of the big dryer I let it go on low heat fairly slowly, in case of my home dryer I let the print sit until dry. In both cases the prints come off with a lot of small fibers stuck to them. I've tried washing the canvas but that didn't help... What can I do? I've tried air-drying but it doesn't get the prints flat enough.

It sounds like the canvas apron needs to be replaced.

What about putting a fine piece of cloth between print and dryer cloth as intermediate solution?

You can start by washing the apron, I had to replace my apron, it was coming apart, as I could find a replacement I had on made for me, not too expensive. Most of year I use drying screens, then press the prints in a mounting press.

throw out the drier or just quit using it. Those things have never, in my experience, worked well. I think they were mainly intended for newspapers or other industrial uses where quality of the final print was not real important.

Go to the hardware store and buy yourself a couple of vinyl (NOT metal) window screens, the kind with thin metal frames. Mine are 24 by 36, or thereabouts.

Dry the wet prints as well as you can with paper towels, sandwich them between the screens and let them air dry. They'll come out reasonably flat, lint-free, easily mounted, framed, whatever.

If you are using double weight paper, you might even just hang them from the clothesline by a corner. After they're dry they'll be pretty flat, but you can mash them under a big book for a day or so to make them even flatter. I have a friend who puts them in a cold mounting press to do the same thing.

summicron1 said:

throw out the drier or just quit using it. Those things have never, in my experience, worked well. I think they were mainly intended for newspapers or other industrial uses where quality of the final print was not real important.

Click to expand...

My Arkay drum print dryer drys without the problems you have. Have you tried RTFM? :confused:

If you have the flat clamshell type dryer at home, you can use that to flatten your prints instead of drying them. I hang up wet prints and let them dry. Then I take them, make a stack facing up, and put the clamshell dryer on it's highest setting. After it is hot, I place the stack in the dryer, close it and turn off the heat. When the dryer is cool, my prints are pretty much flat. If they aren't completely flat, I put them under a weight for a couple of days.

If you want to use your dryer as an actual dryer the best way to do it is to do one print at a time. When I am in a hurry to get a print flat and dry, this is what I do. Turn on the dryer and place the print in it. Run your hand over the canvas smoothing it for a few seconds then open the dryer, turn the print over and close the dryer smoothing the canvas again. Repeat this until the print is dry.

I should mention that I always use a sheet of hot press watercolor paper between the canvas and the print.

You can save the prints with the fibers imbedded by soaking them for a while then gently wiping them with your finger under the water. That should dislodge any fibers from the emulsion.

I hope that helps you.

Lycka till!

Cybertrash said:

Hey everyone,

Just came home from a 12h Darkroom session where I produced quite a few nice prints that I'd like to give away, but a fair amount of them were ruined by our print dryer. Whenever I dry fiber prints We have a large fiber print dryer with a rolling drum and canvas, but I have experienced the same issues with my drum & canvas "ferrotyping" dryer at home as well. As per instructions I first squeegee the print and put it on the canvas. In the case of the big dryer I let it go on low heat fairly slowly, in case of my home dryer I let the print sit until dry. In both cases the prints come off with a lot of small fibers stuck to them. I've tried washing the canvas but that didn't help... What can I do? I've tried air-drying but it doesn't get the prints flat enough.

Click to expand...

Have used Kodak drum dryers in the past, but as my work never has to be printed and out the same day anymore, stopped using them a long time ago. Indeed, when our basement darkroom got flooded from above, and the dryer was covered in soggy ceiling tiles, it ended up in the skip!

However, I used to have the same problem in a commercial darkroom I used to work in regarding fluff, despite the boss washing the blanket. My solution was to heat the dryer up, wind the prints slowly through by hand a couple of times, leave them to dry emulsion upwards by air on blotting paper for a bit, (15 mins?) and then wind them through again to check they wont stick and then let them go through normally. This all refers to drying unglazed with the emulsion against the canvas.

Another point, are your prints squeegeed before going on the drum? If not, that is probably adding to the problem.

An effective way of ending up with flat prints without a NASA sized budget is to make the borders 5mm bigger than you need and then to use watercolourists tape (they use it for shrinking paper by wetting and air-drying it, pretty much the same job in other words) to fix the sponged/squeegeed print to a rigid impervious surface. A glass door, or a window, or a piece of acrylic-sheet, or formica covered chipboard or . . . lots of things work.

Doing this way the paper shrinks slightly as it dries and the fibres dry flat - they are not dried together in a curve than brutalised afterwards, they really are flat. The only curve might come later when the air humidity changes a lot, but even that is less than a squashed-flat print returning to it's previous state.

The disadvantage of the method for you will be needing to transport wet prints home, though you can try soaking and wiping the prints you now have in order to remove the cotton fibres and then taping them up at home.

In no particular order, as it depends on practicality for you, actions are 1) suggest washing the dryer cloth to the darkroom proprietor. 2) at an art-shop, find some high-quality acid-free paper to cover the surface of your print as it goes through the rotary-dryer (quite a bit larger than the print as it may 'move' as it goes through the curves of the rotary drier). 3) at an art-shop, get some watercolourists tape (it is a standard product and is even cheap, don't use parcel tape as it's often very acidic). 4) Re-wash the prints you have and dry them using paper for protection (at the darkroom) and/or the taping method (at home).

Only use a print dryer for test prints.

And what about high-gloss?

Get a blotter book that will hold several prints. Place your wet prints in the book for transport home. When home, take them out and hang them or place between drying screens as suggested in the preceding posts.