peeling rc paper for paper negative

[Akki14]

I've heard mumbling of somehow peeling the emulsion off of RC paper to make a more see-through paper negative for contact printing... Does anyone here do this? What's your method for soaking the paper and is there anything to speed up the process?

[Ria]

I have done this a few times by just soaking the paper in water a very long time and then s-l-o-w-l-y peeling the emulsion off the paper. It worked very well for my purposes. I don't know of a way of expediting it. The main problem I had with using the resulting backing-free-emulsion negative was its insistence on curling.
Ria

[Akki14]

I use lucky film sometimes for my contact prints on cyanotype - I know the problems of curly negs! I don't mind though, especially if it's an affordable way of making large negatives.

[keithwms]

I guess my question would be: why??

If you weigh down the paper neg on the receiving paper during contact printing- I use a heavy, half inch thick chunk of glass- the result will be surprisingly sharp.

If that doesn't suffice, then I suppose that the paper could be waxed on the back. That might reduce the effect of the paper texture (though honestly I like that texture)

Both of those options strike me as easier than peeling off the emulsion.

Also, peeling off the emulsion would defeat one of the nicest purposes of a paper neg: you can work at a light table and retouch your neg on the back side with a pencil, erasing if you make blooper. It's fun for the whole family.

Having said that, if you get it to work please let me know, I am always game to learn new tricks!

[Akki14]

I tried with cyanotype paper today and the results weren't so sharp. It's probably because cyanotype works based on shadows more than on anything as fast as silver gelatin paper which reacts to any light not just mostly-UV light. I use a proper contact printing frame so I'm definitely getting good contact between paper and paper.

[Dave Miller]

A few observations because I've never tried to split a print like this.
Surely R/C paper would need to be soaked for a very long time because it is specifically designed to keep water out?
For the same reason I doubt that waxing the back would have much effect, certainly not to the extent that it does with fibre paper.
Printing with the emulsion side in contact with the receiving paper achieves maximum sharpness.
The only benefit of pealing a paper would be to reduce the exposure time slightly, and I question if it would be worthwhile.

[Akki14]

The only benefit of pealing a paper would be to reduce the exposure time slightly, and I question if it would be worthwhile.

Nonpeeled paper took 2-3hour exposure to 100% sunshine yesterday. And I was contacting emulsionside down against the coated paper so I'm not sure why it looks slightly blurry.

[Dave Miller]

Nonpeeled paper took 2-3hour exposure to 100% sunshine yesterday. And I was contacting emulsionside down against the coated paper so I'm not sure why it looks slightly blurry.

I'm beginning to see your problem, with the English sun. The method generally employed with paper negatives is to rub paraffin wax, or similar, into the back of the print to render the paper translucent, but as I wrote earlier I don't think that will work with r/c paper.

[Schlapp]

Try doing it under a tungston lamp. And put a heavy piece of glass over them to hold them together. Using an enlarger lamp, my exposures through RC paper are around 30 secs to 1 min.

[Dave Miller]

That's a thought Schlapp, I had assumed that Akki14 was trying to print one of the alternative processes that demands UV rich light.