February 23, 2006, from Lloyd Erlick,

My darkroom is pretty much functional again
after a hiatus.

Yesterday I put my print flattener back into
service. It's the high-tech version -- a
stack of heavy flat things with a weight on
top.

Some of my heavy flat things are sheets of
glass and some are melamine-covered particle
boards of appropriate dimensions (plastic
covered both sides).

Before using my Print Flattener DeLuxe, I had
to clean all the heavy flat things, both
sides. The melamine is white, so dirt would
show. They were surprisingly clean, actually,
even though I've been a bit careless with
them recently. I used some ammonia and
distilled water on clean rags to swab them.

This post is about the tiny things we do that
can contaminate our process. While cleaning
my plastic covered boards, I found some
(mercifully few) tiny black spots. I thought
they would be permanent, but I noticed the
ammonia dissolved them extremely slowly, and
applying a thumbnail broke them up if they
were wet with ammonia.

Well, it didn't take long to figure out the
source of the specks. I sign my prints with
India ink. Obviously I have not been patient
enough to let the ink dry every time I use
it. I'm just glad there were not more black
specks.

It should be no problem to flatten prints
with boards that have dried India ink on
them. Once dry the stuff certainly will not
transfer. But the presence of the specks
gives the flattening devices a dirty look,
and makes examining them for real dirt take
much longer. It also means I have been
careless in handling my prints in the past!
I'm just lucky no smudged prints resulted.
(Hm - none I noticed, at least ...).

So, an unnecessary update. Take more care
(even more care ...) with print finishing. Do
not allow dirt to accumulate on print
flattening devices.

India ink on the glass flat things scraped
off in an instant. (On glass I could use a
razor scraper, but not on the melamine.)
India ink on melamine is tenacious and
tedious.

In the past I've always done print spotting
and signing before flattening. I'm not sure
why, since flat prints would be easier to
spot. Maybe I didn't want to bother
flattening prints I decided not to spot and
sign. But no signed prints under the
flattener would mean no ink transfer ...

regards,
--le