I've shot a couple of dozen of 8x10 xray negatives by now, and some of the negatives don't have usable images on them for various reasons. I saved the sheets, so I have a small stack of maybe a dozen sheets that I can repurpose. Nearly all of them have partial images on them, developed and fixed, and they are double sided. I'd like to use these sheets as temporary supports for carbon tissue.
I see three likely routes to use them:
1. Strip them so that only the film base remains and then pour the flop onto them. But will the tissue adhere to the stripped film, or can I expect it to peel off like it would from e.g. a sheet of smooth plastic (I've tried that with 1mm polyethylene sheets and it doesn't work at all)?
2. Bleach the negatives thoroughly and then fix out the silver. This will leave the existing gelatin coating in place and should be a perfect adhesion layer for the tissue. What would be the fastest and most economical way of bleaching the negatives? If possible, I'd like to refrain from buying permanganate or ferricyanide bleach only for this purpose, since I don't use it for anything else.
3. Just use them as they are, leaving whatever images are on the negatives intact. Would the silver images somehow partially transfer along with the tissue onto my carbon prints and create ugly artifacts particularly in the highlights?
Your experiences and ideas are most welcome!
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