Hi Guys.
As you may or may not have heard on the news recently, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and a few surrounding cities were inundated by flooding of unprecedented levels. Thousands of homes, especially in the Denham Springs area, were totally submerged and several more received varying level of flood damage. My mother's home received roughly 3 inches of water throughout the house, and while thankfully no one was hurt, several packages of drug store prints and negatives were affected.
The good news is that the prints and negatives that came in contact with the flood waters were wet for less than 24 hours, so there are no visible signs of mold growth. The other good news is that I was able to separate the prints and negatives from each other before they started to stick and dry together. So far, all of my negatives and prints are dry and either sleeved or placed in sandwich bags.
So now I'm trying to find out the best way to wash, remove, and prevent any contamination that might have occurred. I have a plan for how I'm going to do this but my reason for this post is for you guys to provide any advice or direction on the best methods and practices I should be following.
Alright so for the prints I was simply going to use a 5 tray setup of distilled water with each print washing for 30 sec per tray and then left to dry image side up on a window screen. For the negatives my plan is to give them 1min-2min soak in distilled water and then reintroduce them to fresh stabilizer for 30 sec followed by line drying as usual. My reason for re-stabilizing is because I'm afraid that the flood waters might have messed with whatever protectant barrier was once on the film.
What do you guys think?
As you may or may not have heard on the news recently, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and a few surrounding cities were inundated by flooding of unprecedented levels. Thousands of homes, especially in the Denham Springs area, were totally submerged and several more received varying level of flood damage. My mother's home received roughly 3 inches of water throughout the house, and while thankfully no one was hurt, several packages of drug store prints and negatives were affected.
The good news is that the prints and negatives that came in contact with the flood waters were wet for less than 24 hours, so there are no visible signs of mold growth. The other good news is that I was able to separate the prints and negatives from each other before they started to stick and dry together. So far, all of my negatives and prints are dry and either sleeved or placed in sandwich bags.
So now I'm trying to find out the best way to wash, remove, and prevent any contamination that might have occurred. I have a plan for how I'm going to do this but my reason for this post is for you guys to provide any advice or direction on the best methods and practices I should be following.
Alright so for the prints I was simply going to use a 5 tray setup of distilled water with each print washing for 30 sec per tray and then left to dry image side up on a window screen. For the negatives my plan is to give them 1min-2min soak in distilled water and then reintroduce them to fresh stabilizer for 30 sec followed by line drying as usual. My reason for re-stabilizing is because I'm afraid that the flood waters might have messed with whatever protectant barrier was once on the film.
What do you guys think?
