for a different way of making carbon prints -Mix your Knox generic gelatin to ~3% and you'll be able to spray it on the substrate-. I tried 10% and that made "orange skin" so when I transferred to the final support to then develop the image I get a grainy finish that is composed of all the individual microscopic bumps... sort of neat looking. I just said things that don't jive with dichromate carbon so let me back up a bit. Here is what I working for me (I am a beginner) as a safe "ferric carbon".
for an 8.5X11 sheet:
1.5g gelatin,
.5g tite bond wood glue original (red bottle) formula.
0.5 sugar
0.5 g Ammonium iron(III) oxalate used
1.6g ink - I'm working on this
0.5g citric acid - I'm working on this
60ml water
I mix this in a little glass beaker, toss it in the microwave for 9 to 12 seconds and then mix some more. Then I spray it on a piece of plastic. Oxalates and fine carbon mist are bad for you, so wear a mask/respirator. I am using thick polystyrene because I wanted to expose from the plastic side and it is the most transparent to UV material. However I stopped doing that so I expose from the glop side now. Any plastic or Yupo should work fine. I have some fake Yupo and some transparencies. The transparencies can be without coating, it doesn't play a role either way. A standard size for the cheap air brushes on amazon is 7ml so you'll be spraying several times to get the entire 60ml to stick. It sprays glass-like.
Anyway, now put your very thin and delicate wet glop under a fan. I use a 12in 12v computer fan. After maybe 15minutes to an hour you'll notice the glop go from shiny to mat dry. Now expose the way you expose. Next spray .3% to 1% hydrogen peroxide to start the fenton reaction. Wait 30 seconds or more. Then using cold water remove the excess oxalate, which will look yellow. Do several washes. There should be no gelatin dissolving. if you need higher temperature- even up to scalding 50C- just increase the titebond proportion to anything higher. More titebond tends to yellow the paper more. Maybe one of those clear glues does the trick?
Anyway, now you have a developed image hidden away in murky glop. You should be able to see some features of the image at certain low angles with respect to your illumination source. But the image is stuck on the surface. So take the final support paper and wet it in 50% titebond and water. I am also adding gelatin to this mix to see if it helps anything with the yellowing. with the paper fully wet and shrunk and without wrinkles, pick it up from the top and bottom in a U shape and then place the bottom of the U on the still wet glop image. Swiftly and carefully drop the rest of the paper on the image trying to avoid air pockets. I did it several times now so it is very easy to do. Then just wait. I dry my images overnight. Using a thick plastic helps because the paper will shrink and peal away on its own. The very thin acetates tend to curl with the paper and you have to carefully peal them.
This process gives you a very glossy image. I tried it with cyanotype formula and oh boy the detail is great!. Most of this process is borrowed from the cyanotype on glass recipes out there and from Habib Saidane's youtube experiments. On the book "The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes" from Christopher James suggested spraying on page 169 and other places related to spraying just the sensitizer.... but never ever dichromate sensitizer. And it works really well so I wanted to share this info because I don't see anyone really embrazing that.
I was going to try this just with a manual spray bottle but then I had an actual spray paint gun for car paining. That gun worked really well, like you can coat a single sheet in just a couple of seconds well. But I wanted to try something a little smaller so I got this thing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LO4PKY2?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title its the cheapest kit I could find. Then I installed the 0.5 nozzle with the 0.3 needle to get more volume. Now I would only wish they made it with a 60ml bottle. Spraying 7ml at a time is fine though. it gives the previous coat a few seconds to set. The spray also works with gum Arabic.
Since I am only a beginner, I would like to know if anyone else has tried this and maybe take a look at your work examples?
for an 8.5X11 sheet:
1.5g gelatin,
.5g tite bond wood glue original (red bottle) formula.
0.5 sugar
0.5 g Ammonium iron(III) oxalate used
1.6g ink - I'm working on this
0.5g citric acid - I'm working on this
60ml water
I mix this in a little glass beaker, toss it in the microwave for 9 to 12 seconds and then mix some more. Then I spray it on a piece of plastic. Oxalates and fine carbon mist are bad for you, so wear a mask/respirator. I am using thick polystyrene because I wanted to expose from the plastic side and it is the most transparent to UV material. However I stopped doing that so I expose from the glop side now. Any plastic or Yupo should work fine. I have some fake Yupo and some transparencies. The transparencies can be without coating, it doesn't play a role either way. A standard size for the cheap air brushes on amazon is 7ml so you'll be spraying several times to get the entire 60ml to stick. It sprays glass-like.
Anyway, now put your very thin and delicate wet glop under a fan. I use a 12in 12v computer fan. After maybe 15minutes to an hour you'll notice the glop go from shiny to mat dry. Now expose the way you expose. Next spray .3% to 1% hydrogen peroxide to start the fenton reaction. Wait 30 seconds or more. Then using cold water remove the excess oxalate, which will look yellow. Do several washes. There should be no gelatin dissolving. if you need higher temperature- even up to scalding 50C- just increase the titebond proportion to anything higher. More titebond tends to yellow the paper more. Maybe one of those clear glues does the trick?
Anyway, now you have a developed image hidden away in murky glop. You should be able to see some features of the image at certain low angles with respect to your illumination source. But the image is stuck on the surface. So take the final support paper and wet it in 50% titebond and water. I am also adding gelatin to this mix to see if it helps anything with the yellowing. with the paper fully wet and shrunk and without wrinkles, pick it up from the top and bottom in a U shape and then place the bottom of the U on the still wet glop image. Swiftly and carefully drop the rest of the paper on the image trying to avoid air pockets. I did it several times now so it is very easy to do. Then just wait. I dry my images overnight. Using a thick plastic helps because the paper will shrink and peal away on its own. The very thin acetates tend to curl with the paper and you have to carefully peal them.
This process gives you a very glossy image. I tried it with cyanotype formula and oh boy the detail is great!. Most of this process is borrowed from the cyanotype on glass recipes out there and from Habib Saidane's youtube experiments. On the book "The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes" from Christopher James suggested spraying on page 169 and other places related to spraying just the sensitizer.... but never ever dichromate sensitizer. And it works really well so I wanted to share this info because I don't see anyone really embrazing that.
I was going to try this just with a manual spray bottle but then I had an actual spray paint gun for car paining. That gun worked really well, like you can coat a single sheet in just a couple of seconds well. But I wanted to try something a little smaller so I got this thing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LO4PKY2?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title its the cheapest kit I could find. Then I installed the 0.5 nozzle with the 0.3 needle to get more volume. Now I would only wish they made it with a 60ml bottle. Spraying 7ml at a time is fine though. it gives the previous coat a few seconds to set. The spray also works with gum Arabic.
Since I am only a beginner, I would like to know if anyone else has tried this and maybe take a look at your work examples?
