Washing Prints.

C

chris-red

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Chris
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My Darkroom is situated in my loft. I don't have much space but successfully printed my first prints. I have no running water up there and getting in and out is complicated enough to mean that when I am up there, I'm up there, no in and out. I took a bucket of water up with me to put my prints in after being fixed I figured that would do until came down and could wash them better. However my bucket isn't really big enough to hold 8x10 prints and as a result the corners of the prints seemed to take a bit of a battering and looked scruff by the time I can brought them down.

I can't use a bigger bucket as carrying and fitting it through the whole would be too difficult.

Is there a better way that doesn't involved re plumbing my house? Would it be ok to give them a quick dunk in the bucket them hang them them wash them properly later?

Thanks

Chris
 
Yes. :)
I had a darkroom in the loft, no plumbing, so I put them in a bucket and washed them later in the bath. Are they fibre based paper or synthetic (fibre based absorbs more chemicals and I'm not sure a dunk and wash later would work).
 
I think that would be fine for resin coated paper. The wash is intended to get rid of the fixer that has impregnated the paper and would cause long term damage to the print if not washed. But as long as it is washed at some stage it shouldn't really matter when. Just try to get rid of any excess fixer in your first dunk.

Not sure if it would work for fibre based paper but RC paper is so good I'm not sure if it's worth bothering with FB paper anymore (puts on tin hat)
 
as long as they are washed soon after the printing session they will be no problem. It does not even have to be in running water. seven changes of water with a 5 minute soak between each will achieve near archival quality.

However if you leave them soaked in fix for too long they it will start to attack the silver image... especially if you are using a fast fix containing ammoniumthiosulphate.
 
I use RC paper and I'm fairly sure my fix says something like AM Fix on the bottle so I assume it is a fast one. I'll keep them in the bucket and wash them in the bath then!
 
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