Yellow print edges (RC). Delamination?

Hello all,

yesterday I had some fun with cropping 135 negatives to square. I was just fooling around and for that reason I used some satin surface RC 6x4 paper I was given for free. After finishing my darkroom session, I noticed that the edges of the prints seemed a bit yellow. I wasn't very sure though, so I left them to be examined in daylight. Today I confirmed that. All the prints have a yellowish hue at the edges. The rest of the print is ok and I'm sure about it as I didn't cut them square, so there's quite a lot of unexposed bright white paper.

All of them were washed adequately. After all, it's not hard with RC paper. Fixer (Ilford rapid) was far from exhausted. All other chemicals are ok (Ilford MG dev, kodak indicator stop bath) and other prints made 2 days earlier are just fine. So, could it be delamination? I assume that the chemicals somehow got there and weren't washed away and the edges look a tiny bit thicker than they should. The paper pack must be at least 8 years old (price tag in drachmas, not euros). Total "wet" time was less than 15', probably about 10', but all chemicals and wash water must have been at about 25 to 27 degrees Celsius.

So, has anybody else seen this happening?

It does sound like the fixer has got into the edge somehow. Not sure if it would be due to delamination though. Is it all the way round or just one edge?

If all the way round, I would suspect too long in the fix.


Steve.

Yes, and it's very annoying. I posted a similar problem quite recently to mixed responses. In the end I bleached the print edges and refixed them, because the stain wasn't on the image itself. Tedious, but it sorted the problem.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

@Steve: It's all the way around. After close inspection, you can see that the edges are kind of rough. Nothing that you could spot easily, you need to pay attention and compare it to something else. These papers were tightly packed in the black bag too, that might have made some difference. The prints were in the fixer for 60". No more, no less. That might be more than enough, considering that the solution was above 25 degrees Celsius.

@Solarize: Annoying would be an understatement in your case. Thanks for the link. I might try to repeat with fresh fixer, but I don't think it was "silver laden" as Ian Grant says.

Thanks a lot!