Wondering about albumen coating on wet or dry paper

[John Bartley]

These answers and the accompanying discussion are fabulous. I have learned a huge amount from this.

Jim Noel : I will read more on these other processes before making a decision on where to start.

thank you,

 

[mikepry]

I really agree with Jim as albumen can be a monster. Very labor intensive and one can go through the whole procedure and one little slip up with something at the end and.....curtains!! I used to use alcohol to cure my first coat and match the salt percentage in the alcohol to the salt percentage in the albumen itself. I'd often spend a day just coating paper and then put it in my dry mount press (cold) and store it there for awhile and it would flatten out really nice. I also used that "China White" powder whose name is kaolin I think in my silver nitrate solution to gather and hold all the residues and impurities that collect in the solution. I have a boatload if anyone needs any. Then one gently decants the silver nitrate solution out of the brown glass bottle(s). Although daunting when it works it is astounding. Our very own Chad Jarvis has a great section on Albumen on his website under the info link.link here

And speaking of Chad Jarvis....don't anyone say anything but he's tying the knot tomorrow!

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Alcohol drying is a method, but steaming is less unpleasant than standing over a tray of alcohol.

I like the tricks that PE mentions from the GEH workshop--a glass tube to smooth out the bubbles in the albumen and a hotplate to harden it. I might try those. I just cut down some paper to albumenize, though, so this batch I'll do the way I've been doing--floating it and hanging to dry.

 

[Don M]

'I really agree with Jim as albumen can be a monster. Very labor intensive and one can go through the whole procedure and one little slip up with something at the end and.....curtains!! "

That's the truth.


but this might be a possible way to proceed--

start with matte albumen paper without the salt,which imo is pretty easy to do.I do VDB on this because I can't get that color any other way, and I like the finish. The difference between plain water color paper and matte albumen, is the difference between flat latex paint and eggshell finish.

You could probably put salt in the albumen and make matte albumen salted paper prints.I haven't tried it ,but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work.

Once you're OK with that you can start to learn how to float the paper on the silver nitrate solution--it won't look the same as the glossy, but imo the success rate is a lot higher---I think because you can't see every little imperfection in the matte,as you can in the glossy--

then when you're really tired of making one perfect matte albumen print after another---move on to the glossy