Hydrophobia...

No, don't worry, I haven't developed an intense fear of water. But the edges of my plates have. I've used Rain-Clear on them. It's originally used to make car windshields water-repellent to improve your visibility during rain. Instead of clinging to the surface, drops just run off the glass.

I coated one side of the plates completely and only a small border around the edges on the other side. Now during pouring the gelatin only sticks to the uncoated region, and the edges dry more evenly, resulting in very uniform coatings.

WARNING: It looks like this stuff really forms a chemical bond to the glass. It's probably a silane compound with a very hydrophobic group at the end. Even after cleaning many times, it's still on the plates. A good thing if you want to reuse the plates, but make sure you don't get the tiniest drop of the stuff on the region you want coated.

Holomania...

This weekend I was struck by holomania. It's a well known side effect of inhaling the sweet vapors of iso-propanol for a prolonged time.. ;-)

So I made a couple of plates.. Well, OK, a bit more than a couple... :-)


After exposing and developing nearly all of them, these two looked best:



Very satisfied once again!

First holograms!

After having ordered a whole bunch of chemicals and other supplies my first tests were made. Despite its bad mode pattern I used the violet laser. For small pathlength differences (i.e shallow reflection holograms), it worked OK. Even though you can see that I need to improve on processing techniques, there's a hologram and it's quite bright. Thanks for all your support Ahmet, my first DCG!