I'm in the process of restoring some 1890-1900 half-plate glass negatives.
They were found in the back of a kiln, and in a truly appalling state. The best I can hope for is to recover portions, and normal retouching processes don't apply - for instance I have black areas where the emulsion is missing and, in general, I'm not going to attempt to fill these in.
However, one plate has much of the emulsion peeled away from the glass, dried out and curled up - and is in multiple pieces.
With great care and under heft magnification, I've been able to clean the underlying glass, moisten the emulsion, straighten it out and re-adhere the emulsion to the glass, joining up the multiple sections so that there is not much in the way of a visible join.
My problem is that this dries out very quickly, and the emulsion comes away and curls up again. If I could complete the plate in 10 minutes, I could just about manage to get it scanned in time. But the work is probably going to take 4-5 hours.
I've tried occasional misting, but that gets water where I don't want it and softens the emulsion too much. I've even tried working in a very high humidity environment, but that also causes problems.
What I really need is something (ideally a water additive) that will allow the emulsion to re-adhere to the glass.
I wondered if anyone had any thoughts - I did wonder about gelatin, but that goes a bit lumpy at working temperatures.
They were found in the back of a kiln, and in a truly appalling state. The best I can hope for is to recover portions, and normal retouching processes don't apply - for instance I have black areas where the emulsion is missing and, in general, I'm not going to attempt to fill these in.
However, one plate has much of the emulsion peeled away from the glass, dried out and curled up - and is in multiple pieces.
With great care and under heft magnification, I've been able to clean the underlying glass, moisten the emulsion, straighten it out and re-adhere the emulsion to the glass, joining up the multiple sections so that there is not much in the way of a visible join.
My problem is that this dries out very quickly, and the emulsion comes away and curls up again. If I could complete the plate in 10 minutes, I could just about manage to get it scanned in time. But the work is probably going to take 4-5 hours.
I've tried occasional misting, but that gets water where I don't want it and softens the emulsion too much. I've even tried working in a very high humidity environment, but that also causes problems.
What I really need is something (ideally a water additive) that will allow the emulsion to re-adhere to the glass.
I wondered if anyone had any thoughts - I did wonder about gelatin, but that goes a bit lumpy at working temperatures.
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