Washing Fiber Prints in a Darkroom

Video Transcript

"One important tool to have in your dark room if you're going to choose to make fiber based prints is an archival washer. Now you want to make sure your prints are fixed properly. Fiber based prints take a little bit longer to fix also. Depending upon what kind of fix you use, up to five minutes in that fix. After they're fixed you're going to want to use another chemical called the HypoClear. Okay, very easy chemical to make, same packaging, easy to make. You want to hypo your print for at least a minute. After your print is hypoed, you're going to put it in a wash like this, for really forty-five to sixty minutes. There's one way, these archival washers are pretty expensive. I think this one was about two hundred dollars, which if you're on a budget is kind of high. You can hypo your prints and then let your fiber based prints just sit in a tray of water overnight. Believe it or not that will take out the fix in those prints. But you've got to be careful with them, you really got to leave them someplace overnight where nobody is going to touch them. Once your fiber based print is washed, just squeegee it and then you hang it up on a rack, and then you're going to press your print."