Ink transfer in cold weather?

I was re-scraping a small camelback/master, and was just starting the final fine passes, and I literally hit a wall. The weather got a bit colder (under 50 in the shop), and no matter what I do, I can not get reliable ink transfer. If the ink is on my granite plate super thin, it just smears a light blue transfer. If I put the ink on the plate a little thinner, it just pulls up ALL ink off the granite, and the whole master is blue. I tried sliding in smaller circles, back and forth, "s" shapes. Nothing really works.

This is a master, so I am scraping for high contact...more contact and points than I would for a sliding/operating surface, I would estimate that I am at 40+ points and 50%, but I have scraped masters in better than this in the past.

Is there a way to thin out the DAPRA blue spotting ink, or do I just need a warmer shop?

68 degree's is the ideal temp and the warmer the better. Temp is important to be constant for at least 24 hours so the SE stays the same. Another way to do it is to only use the high lighter and not the ink. Meaning rub the SE with the ink diluted with a Windex and rub it on the SE and wipe it off so it's a thin layer in the pours of the iron and it isn't sticky to the touch. Then clean your surface plate so no bluing is on it. Carefully wipe the plate to get rid of any lint or crud with your hand. Wipe the SE too. Then rub the SE on the bare plate for a count of 20 to 30 as the high spots will get shinny and you will scrape shinny high spots. You need good LED lighting. Give that a try and let us know what happens.

A very nice LED light source to use for the above technique is one of those large magnifiers on an arm with a ring of individual LEDs for its illumination. This works better than a single LED or a small cluster of LEDs as it provides a much larger cone of light(s) giving your eye a better chance of picking up shiny highlights. Each LED is a point source of light and will only illuminate a specular highlight that lines up so it shines light reflected directly to your eye. Since the magnifier I linked below has 90 LED's spread over about six inches you can see a bunch of highlights over a broad area all at once.

(I have also found that magnifier to be useful for a lot of detail-oriented tasks besides scaping.)

If you buy an LED magnifier light, be sure the LEDs don't have a diffuser over them. You want the individual LEDs to shine as single point sources not as a group of softly diffused lights. The one linked below has the individual lights. Many on the market place the LED's behind a frosted plastic diffuser.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-lis...0?ie=UTF8&condition=all&qid=1549430594&sr=1-8

Denis

Richard King said:

68 degree's is the ideal temp and the warmer the better. Temp is important to be constant for at least 24 hours so the SE stays the same. Another way to do it is to only use the high lighter and not the ink. Meaning rub the SE with the ink diluted with a Windex and rub it on the SE and wipe it off so it's a thin layer in the pours of the iron and it isn't sticky to the touch. Then clean your surface plate so no bluing is on it. Carefully wipe the plate to get rid of any lint or crud with your hand. Wipe the SE too. Then rub the SE on the bare plate for a count of 20 to 30 as the high spots will get shinny and you will scrape shinny high spots. You need good LED lighting. Give that a try and let us know what happens.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips Richard. I will try.