Me and my big mouth. watch this EBay sale going crazy. Live now.

**Tin Can** · 10-Feb-2015, 10:34

Thanks Greg, Kirk, Jac and many others. All great info. I may not ever be good at it, but I can try and perhaps find a better hand to do it. As I have said before, my last wife was an expert at it. She never showed me.

I now have a Homer English Retouching machine from Robert Zeichner , a good knife donated by Dan Dister and several anonymous people supplied retouching formulas, one purported to be the Kodak elixir, which I don't doubt as it smells correct.

**Tin Can** · 10-Feb-2015, 10:42

Originally Posted by Jim Jones

Perhaps Exacto blades can be reshaped to serve as retouching knives. I've often used broken glass and the "unsharp" edges of razor blades to scrape away extremely fine layers of wood and other materials. It doesn't take a razor edge. For some things, an extremely sharp right angle edge gives better control. Broken glass finishes wood better than sandpaper; it doesn't leave sand and particles of wood to be removed.

Jim, I use single edge razor blades constantly. Using them at 90 degrees is, as you say, perfect for removing anything form darn near anything. A handheld razor blade is the perfect tool for removing head gasket coatings from aluminum cylinder heads without scratching or denting the soft surface while maintaining it's 'RA' or surface finish. My engineers insisted I use plastic scrapers, but they never worked, so a covert razor blade application was always needed to removed baked on Teflon...Some do, some draw.

**kintatsu** · 12-Feb-2015, 23:03

I'd recommend going to http://archive.org and doing a search for art of retouching. They have the 1936 and the 1941 editions. I also found others by just searching negative retouching. In one, they recommend a safety razor blade, which can be found in the scraper widgets from hardware stores.

I haven't tried anything yet, as I don't want to risk something I'd like to save. But I'll make a couple practice negatives and try them soon enough.

The site has just about everything you could imagine.

**Tin Can** · 12-Feb-2015, 23:34

Originally Posted by kintatsu

I'd recommend going to http://archive.org and doing a search for art of retouching. They have the 1936 and the 1941 editions. I also found others by just searching negative retouching. In one, they recommend a safety razor blade, which can be found in the scraper widgets from hardware stores.

I haven't tried anything yet, as I don't want to risk something I'd like to save. But I'll make a couple practice negatives and try them soon enough.

The site has just about everything you could imagine.

I have used the Archive before. Really great place.

I have read the Veronica Cass retouching book, a modern work. Your tip pointed me to, 'THE ART OF RETOUCHING AND IMPROVING NEGATIVES AND PRINTS (1941)' which is a revision of a 1896 version. I just started reading it and again right away, very good tips are present.

Thank you.

**kintatsu** · 15-Feb-2015, 03:05

Originally Posted by Randy Moe

I have used the Archive before. Really great place.

I have read the Veronica Cass retouching book, a modern work. Your tip pointed me to, 'THE ART OF RETOUCHING AND IMPROVING NEGATIVES AND PRINTS (1941)' which is a revision of a 1896 version. I just started reading it and again right away, very good tips are present.

Thank you.

Thanks for the information about the Veronica Cass book. I'll definitely look into acquiring a copy.

As for working on my own, I'm doing 4x5, so any touching up should be minor. I just want to make sure I do it right before I work on something I'd like to keep. My thoughts are mostly toward smoothing high values in small areas, so that means a big productions isn't necessary.

Good luck!