What is the final word in Archival Print Washers

[bmac]

My Versalab came today, going to set it up this evening. She ain't pretty, but looks fuly functional

Brian

ps, thanks for the tip!

 

[fingel]

Hey Aggie,
I just finished printing a batch of postcards on AZO. I let the whole thing sit in a plastic dishwashing tub overnight, dumped the water in the morning and hooked up a tray syphen to the tub and washed it in running water for about 20 min. Worked very nicely, no damage to the paper, even after toning and rewashing.

 

[Aggie]

..

 

[bmac]

OK, got the Versalab print washer (11x14) put together this evening. Took a little while longer than I expected, as the directions were not written for visual people like myself. Overall, I am impressed with the washer, it looks like it will do a decent job washing prints. I placed it on the floor of the darkroom are of the garage so I would be able to drain it either into the sink drain, or out the door into a flowerbed. A few nits about the design. The plastic rods that go across the bottom to keep the prints from falling through need a better attachment. Basically you put a washer on the rod and the nbend the rod so it doesn't fall out. It would have been easy enough to supplu some saort of rubber cap that fitted onto the rods, or a silicon sealant / expoxy glue of some sort. Also the rubber stoppers (3 came with the kit) that you use to plus the hole in the drain line in order to drain the unit are tiny. They should have some sort of string attaching them to the unit so you don;t lose them. Also, they don't float, so if you drop one with a full load of prints, you are SOL for draining the unit unless you have a spare, or don't mind plugging it man ually with your finger. Overall, I am happy I got this unit, and saved a ton over the Calumet / zone vi version. It honestly looks like a $50, not $200 piece of equipment, but seeing as there aren't many other washers with this capacity at this price point, I can understand how they get away with charging this much for it. I am glad I got the 11x14, because now I know I can easily build one myself with a trip to the hardware store.

Brian

 

[bmac]

Ohyeah, forgot to mention, it is almost totally silent, which is really cool, my tray with the spray bar and drain holes was very noisy.

 

[Jeremy]

Has anyone looked at the Watersaver print washers at fineartphotosupply.com. They provide you with the siphon tube, plexiglass separators, and the separator guides and you buy a fish tank to throw the sucker in. For an 11x14 with a total capacity of 11 prints or 22 8x10 prints it'll only cost you $130 plus the cost of a fish tank (at Wal-Mart $5-$15). http://fineartphotosupply.com/printwasherpage.htm

 

[chrisl]

Seems real expensive to me Jeremy for what you're getting. Maybe a trip to the plexiglass/plastic store and price some dividers yourself. Good idea though.

 

[Jeremy]

that's not a bad idea. I just wondered if anyone had looked into their product; most of their equipment seems a little over-priced to me, though they did use to sell a shen-hao 4x5 at a very reasonable price.

 

[knisely]

Thank you for this forum. I have to watch costs closely so am interested in the WaterSaver Print Washer Kit from FineArt Photo Supply in Rochester, NY. It supplies the separators, guides, siphon hoses and you supply a ten gallon fish tank to make an 11x14 print washer. It costs $130.00. Has anyone tried it? Or heard of it?

 

[blansky]

I own a Calumet 20x24 print washer that sells for somewhere around $700.

$130 for the parts for this unit doesn't seem out of range. Remember it's not just the plexi partitions etc that you're buying its also the dividers or seperators that the partitions fit into, which if you had to make would have to be cut using a band saw of some sort.

I first saw their site a year or so ago and they were the ones that got some discussion going on this site and photonet about the practice of soaking prints in between washings to save water. Their theory that the fix leaches out during soaking was supported by a number of people on the different forums. I have use this practice with my washer, alternatively soaking and washing.

If you are plannning to buy one of their packages I would suggest that you buy a washer for the size of prints that you may in the future plan to make. Buying, say, an 11x14 now because that is all you are making, may be a mistaken frugality (is that a word) if down the road you start to make large prints. Going the extra mile on this may save you money later, because these things tend to last forever, and the price difference between sizes is probably not that much. I wash everything from 8x10 to 20x24 in mine.

Michael McBlane

 

[jansenh]

My Versalab came today, going to set it up this evening. She ain't pretty, but looks fuly functional

I have had the Versalab washer (their largest model) running for a little more than a year now. With not much references to other washers - I find it to be a convenient and straight forward washer. Ain't pretty like bmac says, but neither am I..... I have had no problems with it.

---
Except from hauling the beast with me from Texas to Norway on various airplanes... (I work on oil-field rigs in the Mexican Gulf from time to time... and I ordered the washer from Versalab adressed to our shipping fasility so I could pick it up when I got onshore before entering the airplane home. But the people in our office saw my name on it and shipped it out to the rig I know better than most people how bulky a large-size printwasher can be. )

 

[DKT]

well, bigger washer just uses up more water. might not be that big a deal, depends on where you live...you can actually get a good wash with a tray & siphon, just not as hands-free as a vertical washer.

 

[lee]

for me, the "hands free" operation is the key thing that sold me. I can place the prints in my washer and I can do something else. Then I come back later and finish the process. Tray and siphon will work but for a big load of prints it is too tedious for me.

lee\c

 

[blansky]

A syphon tray is a great way to go and I use a 20x24 tray with one before I put the prints into the print washer. However if you have more than one print it is not very practical because you aren' t completely sure that the prints are always seperated.

Also to be effective the tray syphon needs to have a lot of water moving through or else the prints will definately stick together. With the print washer you can control how much water is moving through, from a little to a lot, or have it so the prints are just soaking.

Also as has already been stated, with the print washer you don't have to monitor the wash process as closely and can leave the darkroom or concentrate on printing or toneing etc.

Michael McBlane

 

[DKT]

hey--I agree with you about the ease of use & all that, it's just that when it comes down to water use, most of the "archival" washers require alot of water to change out the volume. I have a 13-4 yr old Calumet washer that looks pretty close to an old Gravity Works model. It's similar in a way to the one y'all describe above with the partitions and print wand, yet the dividers aren't totally sealed--i.e. the compartments still let water in from one chamber to the next. The flow can be adjusted & the water can either come out a top chamber or from a bottom exit & this is regulated by a hose clamp. I bought the 11x 14, mostly I do 8x10s.

I experimented years ago, with all sorts of fix/wash sequences to find a good workflow. I also experimented with displacing the volume of water in the washer for smaller runs etc, and using a water timer on the unit for soak periods. I used test prints with the HT2 kit from Kodak and discovered the washer gave me an uneven flow across the print surface and in different slots as well. I wound up having to rotate & shuffle the prints every 10-5 minutes through the wash. So I can't just load it up & walk away anyways..it reminds me of running film in our deeptank. For the wash, it uses a "quick dump" tank--which is a big stainless steel tank, the water comes in the bottom and exits from overflow holes at the top, you can dump the whole thing in like 15 seconds with a gate. When you run film, you stand there & agitate the racks a bit or else hypo will cling to them at the tops in little eddys that form in the flow...you do a prewash of 10 min, dump the tank twice, then go to PW tank, then back for a repeat of ten minutes, dump the tank twice. Agitate & shuffle the racks all through it. If you loaded it up & walked away you'd get stains on your film that wouldn't come up for a few years....

But with my washer, it didn't seem to matter much about which sequence I used as far as getting the stain down to an acceptable level. In the end, I wound up having to use a good 65 gallons of water or so per print session.

If I just make a couple of prints, I stand at the tray and keep them separated--and use an inverted glass graduate in the center as well. Before we had a processor we used tray siphons and big trays for years where I work. They did murals in house & used big kreonite sinks to wash them in--someone just stood there and did the whole thing by hand. when I first started working here, they didn't even use siphon for oversize prints--they just had a tray with a bunch of holes drilled in the side, and rocked it under a running hose, every once & a while you'd dump the whole thing....then we got a big Arkay washer, that is basically a flexible basket in a stainless steel tank with holes at the top. It's not a big deal for me to stand next to a tray for an hour-- I stand in the dark & run film by hand, stand at the processor & make prints I don't paritcularly enjoy, why should it bother me to stand at a tray with something I do enjoy?

like they say--YMMV.

KT

 

[DKT]

BTW--I still use a siphon with the automatic processors I use at home & work (a 2150 and a Printo). At work, our toning sequence is to turn off the dryer, take the damp print and rewet it in a 1 min quick wash with a tray siphon on one end of the sink. In the middle are the toner(s), then into another tray with a siphon and into another dryer. It takes me maybe 15 minutes per print this way.

 

[bdial]

I'm currently shopping for an archival washer. Anyone using the fineartphotosupply fish tank mod?
A semi-local shop has a Zone VI and a Kostiner Cascade washer both used for reasonable cost. Opinions on either?
Thanks
Barry

 

[ZoneIII]

I don't know what the "final word" is in print washers but I do have something to share. I would avoid Zone VI print washers. There are several reasons for this. I owned one and returned it to Calumet. At that time, they told me that many people had returned their Zone VI washers for the same reason that I did and production ceased about time. Zone VI washers, at least the later models, had some very bad design flaws. The worst was the fact that if you washed the largest size prints that the washer was designed to take, the prints actually stuck out over the dividers and could fold down over one another impeding the flow of water. In addition, that meant that the compartments were not separate which is an obvious disadvantage. Also, the plastic caps that you laid over the dividers to prevent prints from rising, were not slotted and, for some bizarre reason, the end dividers had ends that were higher so the cap did not even lay on the top of the dividers, allowing the prints to float up. Really terrible design! In addition to that, water only entered the washer at one end. There were other bad things about Zone VI washers too but I just can't remember those things off-hand. Calumet was very nice, as usual, when I asked to exchange my Zone VI washer for a Calumet washer (made by Gravity Works, I believe.) I have had that for many years now and it's great. It doesn't have any of the problems that the Zone VI washer had and it also injects water from both ends of the unit in a cross-fire pattern which gives better and more even turbulence. It's a MUCH better print washer than the Zone VI.

When talking to photographers, it becomes obvious that many don't really understand the processing of print washing. It is really a process of dispersion and as long as the water has a lower concentration of hypo in it than the paper does, hypo will disperse into the water. You do not need to have rapid water changes - like every five minutes - as is often reported. However, it does speed things to do a total dump and refill a couple times but it's really not necessary. Washing in trays is fine unless you are washing many prints which, unfortunately, is usually the case. But there are ways to do it with reasonable efficiency and I used those methods years ago. You can even wash prints by simply letting them sit in water for a while and then changing the water or moving them to a tray of fresh water. Residual hypo test should be done if you do it this way. But, again, washing works by dispersion.

There are many designs of print washers on the market. Some are better than others. I would only suggest that you NOT get a Zone VI washer unless it is the older style with the dividers that were taller than the maximum print size that the washer was designed for. Ansel Adams used the old style Zone VI washers. I have no idea what Fred Picker was thinking when he changed the design. But Fred was known for hype more than good design. I used to love reading is sales pitch that said, "Hypo is heavier than water and the last time I check the law of gravity had not been repealed" or something to that effect. Utter nonsense!