Using lamp black

[jgmotamedi]

I have been having problems removing the lamp black from my plates.

Following archived advice on this forum, I tried using a random orbit sander with a microfiber cloth on a foam pad for buffing, and have been very pleased with the results. This weekend I tried adding a buff of lamp black between the initial powdered rouge and the plain buffs, but I had a very hard time completely removing the lamp black. Although the polish looked great with the lamp black, after developing I noticed dozens of little clear spots which are not there when I use only rouge.

I used two, and then three clean buffs after the lamp black to try to remove it, but nothing seems to work.

For what it is worth, I treated the lamp black just like powdered rouge; I put it in a food dehydrator for 24 hours, then put it into a little bottle with a fine cloth covering the mouth. I use a really a minuscule amount–much less than rouge–just a few taps on the jar. I purchased the lamp black from Daniel Smith, and it should be excellent quality.

Any advice?

[RonF]

Hi-

I wish I knew why this forum so so quiet lately (or perhaps it was unusually active when I joined a while ago). I was going to leave this to others, as some of my posts have missed the mark, but I do have a hunch on this.

I suspect that your problem is not what you think it is. The lampblack serves to highlight other problems/impurities and it should be easy to tell if you have any left any on the plate. If you have removed all of the impurities after polishing and you can wipe the whole plate with ultrasuede and it comes up clean, then go ahead and put some lampblack on. You don’t need a ton, but perhaps more than you have been using. Then with a new piece of ultrasuede, distribute the lampblack over the plate. Keep using new pieces of ultrasuede to pick up the lampblack until they come up clean. At that point, you can be pretty sure that your plate has no contaminants on the surface. If you still have spots then it could have something to with issues with the plate or with impurities in the fixer, or perhaps the fixer is too strong.

As always, more details might help. Have you been reusing the same plates?

[jgmotamedi]

Ron,

Thanks for the response. That is an interesting idea, but I am not sure it makes sense to me. When I use lamp black more spots appear after developing than when I use just rouge. This suggests to me that there are more impurities or contaminants on the plate when I use lamp black than when I don’t. Similarly, I doubt it is the fixer, since I used the same fix with the lamp blacked plates as the rouge-only. In any case, I will investigate using a white microfiber cloth to determine the cleanliness of the plate. I generally don’t use Ultrasuede, except for an initial polish.

jason

[CasedImage]

Black spots post development in my experience are from dust settling on the plate just prior to sensitization with the iodine, as it prevents the iodine from reacting with the silver. Being paranoid about about using a hand blower on the plate before placing it in the iodine box solved it for me, including every time I took the plate out to check the color.

www.CasedImage.com

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