Keep careful notes on your work – every aspect from buffing through sensitizing. Note what succeeds and what fails.
Test Test Test – both fuming and exposure tests will teach you a great deal. A typical NWG test plate has a set of four different fuming (Br) times along one axis and four different exposure times on the perpendicular axis – that’s 16 choices. Pick the best fuming time and exposure combination as a starting point, then expose 3 plates: one a stop over, one even, one a stop under- one of these plates will be beautiful, but you earned it.
Be a consistent operator- There are so many variables in the process, the only way to control them is being systematic. For example, buff your plates the same way every time- same rouge, same stroke count, as close to same environment (temp, RH) as possible. Ditto with fuming and guilding. And when you decide to alter the process, alter one ONE thing at a time. Every aspect of a Dag is connected to every other aspect. Frantically changing a bunch of work flows willy nilly will produce poor results every time, or a “lucky” plate that is unrepeatable.
Read Read Read – A nice shiny plate ready to work costs $50. A hour reading on the inet = free. This site has terrific information throughout all its pages. The Dag. Society also has very strong resources for the contemporary worker through their inexpensive reprints. Get them all.
Get a mentor. I have been very fortunate to meet and work with some terrific Dag artists. They all made me a better operator by generously sharing their successes and failures. They (and I) pay this forward through a site like this.
NWG