What kind of paper do you use?

My advice would be to ditch the Caligo Safewash ink and go back to more traditional inks.

I’ve been printing for many, many years…. and I’ve seen countless “alternative” and/or “safer” inks and washes come and go on the marketplace. Inevitably they lead to problems with drying, or poor ink coverage or whatever. Then the new material goes off the market…. only to be replaced by some other product. I also do a lot of letterpress, and that community went down the road of using veggie-oil for cleaning rollers, which created a serious decline in print quality. Now they are returning to more traditional materials and the problems are slowly going away.

That being said, this is not to say you must use harsh solvents if you don’t feel they are safe. There are a number of water-based inks, especially Japanese-style materials that print very well and wash up with water. McClains has some very good inks that are safe, easy to use, and actually dry on the paper.

About drying your prints: Caligo dries by oxidization of the veggie oil base, and this can be sped up two ways. 1. is by increasing the airflow over the ink surface and 2. by increasing the temperature…. which speeds up the chemical reaction. Lowering the humidity will also help. If you can, hang the prints on a clothes-line in your spare bedroom
and turn the heater on while keeping the air circulating. If you don’t have the room, then you might try baking the prints in the oven at maybe 200 degrees F for a few hours, then spreading them out on a table to cool. Other than that, your only real option is to wait.

Finally, you may want to look at how much ink you are putting onto the paper. Many inks don’t like to dry if they are put down in a very thick layer. Of course I don’t know if this is applicable in your case, but it’s worth considering.

Same problem for me with Caligo straight out of the tube.

I have some prints that are almost 4 years old on standard BFK paper and they will still rub off ink on your finger. Thankfully I only have one tube of it.

I also had a challenge in getting the Caligo Safe-Wash to dry

In my experience the drying time of Caligo inks seems to vary with the paper used and of course the amount of ink applied to the plate. Earlier woodcuts I handprinted on thin rice paper with a blue Caligo ink took a long time to dry.

Yesterday I made some woodcuts on Johannot 125g paper using a Caligo magenta ink, and these prints were quite dry just after printing. These were printed using a press wich allowed me to apply less ink to the plate.

With the Caligo etching inks I have not had any drying problems.

I use caligo safe-wash ink and I love it. It takes about a week to dry. I am using a kozo rice paper for non-reduction prints. A small amount of drying agent if you are doing multi layers of ink. Here is a batch i did with single layer. It is dry to the touch after 6 days. I will give it a couple more days just in case.