In the interests of saving water I'm keen not to run water continually through my Nova archival print washer, so I'm thinking of dev./stop/fixing papers and then leaving them to accumulate in a dish of water, or perhaps hypo clearing agent until there's enough to fill all of the washer slots.

I know it would be poor practice to keep RC papers lying wet in a dish to wait for that length of time as the total recommended wet time for such material is limited to minutes. I can't see any problem though in holding fibre based papers that way, that could mean my fibre papers being 'under water' for 2-2.5 hours by the time the wash was over.

Would there be a problem?

Trevor

I

expect to run water for

-- Trevor Littlewood (trevorlittlewood@aol.com), July 13, 2001

Answers

This is exactly what I do with fiber paper and I have never had any problems.

-- Ed Farmer (photography2k@hotmail.com), July 13, 2001.

I collect RC prints for up to four hours in a tray of water. The only effect attributable to the water appears to be a sign of some slight separation at the corners of some prints once in a while. And if you were to trim the prints at all, this would disappear. I used to collect fiber prints for up to eight hours with no problem.

-- Keith Nichols (knichols1@mindspring.com), July 14, 2001.

You should have no problems keeping fiber based papers wet for up to 3 hours. Past that, the only problem might be that the prints will tend to dry a little less flat.

David Carper ILFORD Technical Service

-- David Carper (david.carper@ilford.com), July 17, 2001.

when i do a full day of printing, i'll have the first few prints in the water bath for sometimes 5 hours before getting to hypo clear and final wash. and if i'm really motivated that day, there may be some ferricyanide bleaching and washing and toning and washing too. never had any problems with this much soaking around, except for the fragility of the edges of my fiber papers. which i just thought was the nature of the beast.

-- James Luckett (jl@mollymail.com), July 17, 2001.