First, thank you for the answers to my first question. Based on the answers that I recieved, it is my understanding that when washing prints in the Paterson,or any washer, every time I add a print, I have to restart the timing of the wash. Washing, lets say 10 prints at different intervals would take a long time. Would it be better to hold them in water and then put them in the washer all at once? Please advise. Thank you.

Francis

-- Francis T. Knapik (fknapik@mail.nysed.gov), January 29, 2002

Answers

Yes, that is the best procedure. Just hold in a tray of water then put all in the washer at once.

-- Arden Howell (Serenisea@aol.com), January 29, 2002.

Not necesarily Francis, if you get a cascade washer or one from Oriental (Cascase from Summitek www.summitek.com and Oriental I think is marketed by Cachet) you can add the prints down stream of the washed ones, thus you can keep track of the ones that have been washing for some time already. Although these washers are a little more expensive they are worth their weight in gold on water savings and ease of use. If you wish to do that you and put all of them in the water all together and then at the end when you have finished printing you can wash them all at the same time, the idea is not to introduce any fresh fixer once you have started washing.

-- Jorge Gasteazoro (jorgegm58@prodigy.net.mx), January 29, 2002.

I believe the Calumet print washers have seperate channels that do not mix the water from one to the other.If anyone has information to the contrary, I'd be interested to know.

Thanks.

-- Michael McBlane (blansky@aol.com), January 29, 2002.

At least one archival washer manufacturer claims that adding prints after others have been washing for a time does not contaminate the batch, even if there are no separate compartments. The site for their technical argument is:

http://www.red-village.com/cross_cont.htm

The basic argument is that the hypo on the newly introduce print immediately dissipates and does not introduce enough new contaminate to cause a problem. They say that this is especially true if you soaked the print first in a wash aid and then rinse it a little before introducing it to the washer, which is a common practice.

This seems to make some sense, though I don't introduce new prints mid-stream since I use a ferrotype dryer and take great pains to make sure the apron does not get contaminated with fixer or other chemicals.

This argument goes against the general wisdom that you should never add new prints to a washer without extended the wash time to the full time for completing a wash. Anyone agree or disagree with this argument?

-- Jim Rock (jameswrock@aol.com), January 29, 2002.

I completely agree with the argument that it is ok to add prints. What the manufacturer is saying is that fixer is completly miscible with water, and that the ratio of concentration of fixer to water is so small that the fixer will not go back into the photograph. Namely in chemistry is well known that solutions migrate from an area of high cocentration to an area of low concetration to reach equilibrium. so if you have a constantly replenishing supply of water, the fixer will tend to migrate from the print to the water, even if you have put a print newly fixed before the ones already on the bath.

-- Jorge Gasteazoro (jorgegm58@prodigy.net.mx), January 29, 2002.

Suppose you rinse a sheet of paper once and put it in the archival washer, and wait forever to get the fixer out of that print and migrate into other prints' gelatin layers. That amount of fixer is well below commonly accepted archival standard. The main reason archival washers have continuously flowing water is this design simplifies the mechanism to make good agitation. In paper washing, agitation is the biggest problem, dilution of the surrounding water is far smaller problem. More so if you have used hypo clearing aid.

One easy way to make sure your drying system is fixer-free is to get a cheap spray, peroxide solution, and ammonia from a discount store. Mix Kodak HE-1 immediatelly before use, spray, wipe, and dry. Residual fixer is destroyed. Check this out for more details (and a lot more stuff that you don't want to know)

-- Ryuji Suzuki (rsuzuki@rs.cncdsl.com), January 30, 2002.