Drying & Mounting bromoils

[walter23]

I finally got around to prepping some bleach/tan solution and I'm going to try some bromoil bleaching & inking this week, but I'm wondering about the drying and mounting aspect of things.

How do you dry them? I have acess to this sort-of-annoying stretched canvas heated drier, and even with regular silver prints I have all kinds of hassles with the emulsion sometimes sticking to the canvas, or little hairs peeling off the canvas and needing to be cleaned carefully off the print. Do you usually just hang dry them? I guess I could make a proper screen drying shelf unit, which I sort of need anyway.

Secondly, does a hot dry-mount press cause the ink to transfer out of the matrix? What do you do to flatten and mount your prints?

[redrockcoulee]

Walter

I am so glad there is soon to be a bromoil expert in Southern Alberta! Next winter when I got a darkroom again I will certainly try bromoils and bromoil transfers (wife has an etching press). Watkins book states drying them by hanging them on a line with clothes pins and Lewis sets them onto plywood with tape and sometimes zaps them as well in the microwave. I would also think that in blotters like an etching would work as well.

Good luck and would love to knew how you do with them, either here or on the Calgary User group.

Ivan

[Gene_Laughter]

Drying - I simply hang 'em on a wire to dry.

Flatten - Let the print (and ink) dry for a couple of days). I wet the back of the print with a sponge and place it in a dry mount press between two scrap pieces of matt board. I leave it there for 5 to 10 minutes with the press set on about 200 degrees.

Cheers,

Gene

[Dave Miller]

Gene, Is that wet as in soaking, or wet as in slightly damp?

[walter23]

Gene, no problem with ink transferring to the matt board? Thanks for the help. Hopefully I can get my first (and possibly quite ugly) bromoil inked up this week

The bleach / tan is sitting patiently in my darkroom. It's so satisfying finally mixing up a poisonous brew that actually looks like toxic sludge - green with yellow foam. Everything else extremely poisonous I've ever worked with has been so unremarkably colourless and bland.

[walter23]

Walter

I am so glad there is soon to be a bromoil expert in Southern Alberta! Next winter when I got a darkroom again I will certainly try bromoils and bromoil transfers (wife has an etching press). Watkins book states drying them by hanging them on a line with clothes pins and Lewis sets them onto plywood with tape and sometimes zaps them as well in the microwave. I would also think that in blotters like an etching would work as well.

Good luck and would love to knew how you do with them, either here or on the Calgary User group.

Ivan

If it works out I'll post a scan on the LFUG (and probably here).

[Gene_Laughter]

Gene, Is that wet as in soaking, or wet as in slightly damp?

Hi Dave! I wring out the wet sponge and lightly rub all over the back of the bromoil print. It's not wet and there's no standing water, but very damp. The heat from the press perfectly flattens the print.

Cheers,

Gene

[Gene_Laughter]

Gene, no problem with ink transferring to the matt board? Thanks for the help. Hopefully I can get my first (and possibly quite ugly) bromoil inked up this week

The bleach / tan is sitting patiently in my darkroom. It's so satisfying finally mixing up a poisonous brew that actually looks like toxic sludge - green with yellow foam. Everything else extremely poisonous I've ever worked with has been so unremarkably colourless and bland.

After drying for a couple of days the ink doesn't transfer to the matt board.

I have never had "yellow foam," or any foam, in my bleach/tan brew?

Are you mixing the bleach chemicals with distilled water? My bleach is a clear emerald green liquid. Is your pot dichromate a 1% solution - 30 ml to a liter? Your description leads me to think that something is amiss? Maybe I'm being overly cautious?

Cheers,

Gene

[walter23]

After drying for a couple of days the ink doesn't transfer to the matt board.

I have never had "yellow foam," or any foam, in my bleach/tan brew?

Are you mixing the bleach chemicals with distilled water? My bleach is a clear emerald green liquid. Is your pot dichromate a 1% solution - 30 ml to a liter? Your description leads me to think that something is amiss? Maybe I'm being overly cautious?

Cheers,

Gene

I didn't use distilled water, but if it's still cloudy when I make dilutions I was planning to acidify it just a bit with vinnegar.

Foam was a bit of a misnomer, I just mean when I was vigorously stirring it to dissolve the Cu(II)SO4, the bubbles that formed were kind of yellow. No foam.

If it doesn't work I'll go to the trouble of getting some distilled H2O.

[Gene_Laughter]

ok - good luck!!!

Gene