Washing Fibre Based Paper

[Ian-Barber]

Her Indoors is frowning at the thought of me running a tap for 10+ minutes to wash Fibre based paper as we are on a water meter.
Now I m not really concerned about longevity but would like them to last a few years without going completely yellow.

Any other options which is less expensive.

 

[martin-f5]

Hi Ian, this is often told by people without a water meter.
I do it an other way, the idea is to get the papers enough time in the water which means I wash it it about 4 steps.
1. some minutes in fresh water, in a tray
2. changing the water after 5 minutes and again
3. bigger tray with max. 2 sheets for about 30 to 60 minutes or more, and some times I'll do this again

Some one found out it's only a minimum of chemistry which doesn't need 10 minutes running fresh water.

please check this:

Lina, the best washing tips

 

[Diz]

Hi Ian. Martin Reed done an article on washing some time back. If I understood it properly, its the mechanical movement of the water flowing over the print, not the volume of water that washes. It was a 2 part article, but I can only find part 1.

Mysteries Of The Vortex (Part One) - Film and Darkroom User

Mysteries Of The Vortex (Part One) Articles

www.film-and-darkroom-user.org.uk

Living in rural Ireland, we have some pretty terrible water. We have been on a boil notice for the last 12 years or so. It is improving but we live too far from Dublin to get things done quickly. So we harvest rain water in several 1000 liter tanks. One feeds the Droom. A small water feature pump and Patterson Major washer doesn't use much water. Is harvesting something you could do?
Cheers
Diz

 

[Ian-Barber]

@martin-f5 system sounds plausible. I think they call this soak and dump
Is there a max time you ca soak this paper, could you leave it overnight or are you likely to see the emulsion at the bottom of the tray the next day

 

[martin-f5]

I think overnight would be quite long, depending on you overnight time.
I make this oft for 3 hours or so and had never issues.
Additional with Selenium toning I first have to wash it for 3 hours before toning and than have to wash it again for several times.

 

[David M]

Mysteries of the Vortex.
There are plenty of myths on print washing. The contaminants are leached out and are not scrubbed off by the flow of water. The flow simply maintains a steeper concentration gradient at the surface.
Martin's articles showed that a vertical whirlpool might look attractive, but can lead a dead area in the centre.
Successive soakings seem to be the most ecologically friendly and economical method.
Let's assume that the paper is one millimetre thick and is entirely soaked with fix. Soaking in a ten millimetre slot reduces the concentration to 10%. A fresh soak reduces this to 1% and the next one to 0.1%. And so on. In the real world, the actual concentrations are very much lower than this.
It's the grain of rice on a chessboard problem all over again.
I doubt that overnight soaking would improve matters although with modern papers it should do no harm. Easy to do a couple of tests. Once equilibrium has been reached in each soaking, further time will give no extra benefit. Perhaps it's wise to keep the time a print spends in the fix bath to a minimum.

 

[Alan9940]

I've always used a very slow flow into my print washer when washing fiber paper because the fixer leaches out of the paper into the water; a high flow rate is not necessary. Therefore, I would think that a "fill-n-dump" technique over a period of time would work just fine. Back in the day, I have left fiber paper in the washer overnight, but don't know how our modern printing papers would handle a long soak. Using a hypo clear step would also help reduce the wash time.

 

[Ian Grant]

I always use wash aid, usually 1-2% Sodium Sulphite but Sodium Carbonate works as well.

Two bath fixing an the last bath must be reasonably fresh, followed by a 10 minute rinse and a soak in the wash aid, then as Alan says above a gentle wash with slow running water, then I Selenium tone. A touch of wash aid again, I do tip the tray out 2 or 3 times and wash for about an hour. Easy economic and effective.

If I've not enough time to Selenium tone I leave to wash, Dry and tone the next day.

Ian

 

[David M]

Out of curiosity, I measured the slots on my print washer.
The are about 15mm wide. (It's under a bench now and difficult to access.)
Most of the water flowing through will not go near the paper at all. I wonder if a more economical washer would use a thin film of water moving continuously. I'm envisaging a shallow slope with the print laid flat on some sort of ribbed or dimpled surface. At one end is an inlet for a gentle cascade of water water which flows gently downward under gravity. For extreme water economy, the water could be recirculated several times and periodically dumped.
This being 2020, it would all be controlled from your iPhone. If electronics are involved, some kind of sensor might be incorporated to detect when the washing is complete to a pre-set standard.

 

[Alan9940]

Wow, David, the slots on your print washer sound very narrow; mine are each about 12mm wide. One thing I really like with my unit is that there are several half-height slats which enable me to lower a rather large 5x4 film washing basket directly into the print washer. If I'm not producing a large number of fiber prints (rarely do), the washer is always set up to wash 5x4 film, 10x8 film, and any print paper up to 14x11". The only downside is that my darkroom sink is not plumbed into the house; I have a long length of tubing that enables me to hook the incoming water up to a faucet in the nextdoor bathroom and a pipe contraption that I built for the outgoing water to flow into a 5 gallon bucket that sits on the floor. Ergo, another reason why I use a low flowrate of water!

 

[David M]

Wow, yes.
15 mm, 1.5 cm. Sorry.