CHAPTER IV.

TOOVEY’S NEGATIVE TRANSFER PROCESS.

A good smooth paper is floated for five minutes upon finest picked

Gum Arabic 5 ounces. Water 15 ounces. Bichromate of Potash 1 ounce.

This is dried in the dark, then exposed to light in a printing frame under a direct negative. It is then laid, face down, upon a polished zinc or stone, if a line subject, or on a grained zinc or stone, if a half-tone subject; upon the back of the print several sheets of damp paper are laid, and then the whole is subjected to very heavy pressure in a hydraulic press, so that the water in the damp paper may be forced through the print and dissolve the gum in the unexposed parts of the sensitive gum coating (which is still soluble). The dissolved gum attaches itself to the stone, whilst the exposed parts being rendered insoluble by the action of light, the damp has no effect upon it, and the stone is protected in those parts.

When the stone has been under pressure for a sufficient length of time, to allow the small traces of gum in the deepest shadows to attach themselves to the stone, the pressure is removed, the stone withdrawn, and the paper carrying the photographic print is carefully lifted up, leaving the bare negative image on a gummed ground. The stone is well dried, and covered all over with a greasy ink applied by a roller or otherwise. The ink is thus brought into contact with all parts of the stone or zinc unprotected by the gum.

The image is then washed out with turpentine, and the gum removed by a damp sponge, after which the stone or zinc is rolled up in the ordinary manner with a leather roller, and is printed from in the ordinary manner.

Of course, it will not be expected that the best results are obtainable by so simple a process. Perhaps in no other branch of work does an outlay of thought and time “pay” so well as in the practice of these interesting photo-printing methods.

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