DRYING THE PRINTS.
In many establishments the prints are taken direct from the washing
water, and hung up by American clips, and thus allowed to dry. When this
is done, the prints curl up as the water leaves the paper, and they
become somewhat unmanageable. If prints have to be dried at all before
mounting--and they must, unless they are trimmed before toning--a better
plan is to make a neat heap of some fifty or sixty of the same size (say
cartes), place them on blotting-paper, and drain for a time, and then in
a screw-press (such as is used to press table-cloths, for instance) to
squeeze out all superfluous water. After a good hard squeeze the prints
should be separated, and the plan adopted by Mr. England carried out. He
has frames of light laths made, of about 6 feet by 3 feet, and over this
frame is stretched ordinary paperhanger's canvas. The prints are laid
on this to dry spontaneously, and they cockle up but very little. The
frames, being light, are easily handled. After the squeezing is done,
supposing the room in which they are placed be not very damp or very
cold, the prints will be ready for trimming and mounting in a couple of
hours. To our minds there is nothing superior to this mode of drying,
since the squeezing in the press tends to eliminate every slight trace
of hyposulphite which might be left in them.
_Trimming the Prints._--Perhaps more prints are ruined in trimming than
in any other way, when the operator is inexperienced, since it requires
judgment to know which part of the print to trim off, so that a right
balance shall be kept. In trimming landscape prints, it is impossible
to give any set rules; the judgment as to what is artistic must be the
guide. Of one thing we may be certain, that, unless the operator who
took the original negative knows exactly how to balance his picture on
the focussing-screen, the print will always bear cutting down in one
direction or the other. Such a clipping, of course, alters the size of
the print, which, if it be one of a series, will be a misfortune; but,
on the other hand, the artistic value of the individual print will be
increased.
For portraits there are some few rules which should be followed in
trimming. Always allow the centre of the face to be a little "out" from
the central line of the print, making more space on the side towards
which the sitter is looking. Allow a carte or cabinet to be cut in
such a way that, if the sitter has been leaning on something, it does
not seem as if he had been leaning on nothing. Should there be an
unintentional lean on the part of the sitter, trim the print so that he
appears in an upright position.
To trim the print, there should be the various sized shapes in glass
used. Thus there should be glasses with bevelled edges for the carte,
the cabinet, and other sizes, which can be laid on the print as a guide
to the trimming. The absolute trimming may be done either by shears
or by a knife, a leather cutters' knife being excellent, since it is
rounded, and can be brought to a keen edge very readily. When the knife
is used, the print is placed on a large glass sheet of good thickness,
the pattern placed over it, and, whilst this is held down by the left
hand, the knife is used by the right, keeping it close to the edge of
the pattern glass. When shears are used, the print is held against the
pattern glass by the left hand, and each side trimmed by one clip,
taking care to make the cut parallel to the edges of the pattern glass.
It requires a little practice to prevent clipping the glass as well as
the paper, but for small sized prints, such as the carte, the shears
have a decided advantage over the knife.
For cutting out ovals, Robinson's trimmer is an excellent adjunct to the
mounting-room, and in this case ovals stamped out of sheet brass are
used as guides.
[Illustration: _Fig._ 29.]
The figure will show the action of the trimmer. The small wheel is the
cutter, and, being pivotted, it follows the curve against which it is
held. It is better to cut out prints with this trimmer on sheet zinc
in preference to glass, the edge of the wheel being kept sharp for a
longer time than where the harder glass is used. To use the trimmer,
the print is placed on the sheet of zinc, the oval mask (or square
mask, with slightly rounded corners) is placed in position on it. The
wheel of the trimmer is brought parallel to, and against, the edge of
the mask, the handle being grasped by the right hand, the thumb to the
left, and the fingers on the right. A fairly heavy downward pressure
is brought to bear on the trimmer, and at the same time the wheel is
caused to run along the edge of the mask. The cut should be clean, and
the join perfect, if proper care be taken. It is desirable to practise
on ordinary writing paper before it is taken into use for prints. Square
masks with very slightly rounded corners can be used; the smaller the
wheel, the less curved the corners need be. It will be seen that there
is a limit to smallness of the wheel used, since, if too small, the
stirrup on which it is pivoted would rest upon the mask. The larger the
wheel the easier is the cutting.
With larger sizes than the carte or the cabinet, mounting may often
have to be delayed, since it is easier to keep a stock of unmounted
prints (say landscapes) unmounted than it is when they are mounted. In
this case the prints should be put away as flat as possible. The plan
of drying we have indicated takes out the "curl," but even then they
will not be flat enough to be handily put away. We therefore recommend
the practice of stroking the prints. A flat piece of hard wood, about
1 foot long and 1-1/2 inch broad, and the thickness of a marquoise
scale, has its edges carefully rounded off. The print is seized by one
corner in one hand and unrolled; the face of the print is brought in
contact with a piece of plate glass. The "stroker," held by the other
hand, is brought with its rounded edge on to the back of the print near
the corner held by the first hand. Considerable pressure is brought upon
the stroker, and the print is drawn through between it and the plate.
The print is then seized by another corner and similarly treated. By
this means a gloss is put upon the print, and the creases and cockles
are obliterated. The print is now ready for trimming.
It is well to have a square of glass with true edges cut to the size of
the pictures. The prints should be trimmed upon a sheet of plate glass,
a sharp penknife being used to cut them. A rough test for ascertaining
if the opposite sides are equal is to bring them together, and see if
both corners coincide.
It may sometimes be found useful to cut out a print into an oval. The
following method for tracing any ellipse may be employed:--On a thickish
piece of clean paper draw a line A B, making it the _extreme_ width of
the oval required. Bisect it at O, and draw D O C at right angles to A
B. Make O C equal to _half_ the smallest diameter of the ellipse. With
the centre C and the distance O B, draw an arc of a circle, cutting A
B in E and F. Place the paper on a flat board, and at E and F fix two
drawing-pins. Take a piece of thread and knot it together in such a
manner that half its length is equal to A F. Place the thread round the
two pins at E and F, and stretch it out to tightness by the point of a
lead pencil. Move the pencil guided by the cotton, taking care to keep
it upright. The resulting figure will be an ellipse. Modifications of
this figure may be made by making a second knot beyond the first knot,
and placing the point of the pencil in the loop formed. When the figure
has been traced in pencil on paper, it should be carefully cut out with
a sharp penknife, and placed on the print which is to be trimmed into an
oval. When so placed, a faint pencil line is run round on the print, and
the cutting out proceeds either by scissors or penknife.
[Illustration: _Fig._ 30.]