Re: Vandyke Question
Scott,
I know this is probably silly but I'll mention it just in case: you'd
need to stir vigorously for quite a while, when you add the silver
nitrate solution slowly and if the solution is heated. That you did
already, right?
Sam Wang
On Feb 23, 2008, at 11:49 AM, Scott Wainer wrote:
Gary,
Yes I use distilled water for the sensitizer. My first 2 batches
were made with water I distilled in my small distiller. They sat on
the shelf for almost a week before I got to thinking that I may
have contaminated the distiller somehow. I went out and bought a
couple of gallons of distilled from the local store. The last six
batches were made with the store bought water but still have the
same problem. I have filtered all 8 batches and combined them in a
1 liter brown glass bottle. There is no sign of precipitate and I
get all the density I need by double coating.
Zev,
I am just getting back into Vandykes but when I did them years ago
I mostly toned with gold before fixing the print. I got a cool
brown tone. I did try the lead and lead/gold toners on some prints.
Done after fixing, they give a deeper brown (almost black - for the
lead toner) or a slate gray (for the lead/gold toner). I never had
much luck with selenium (even diluted 1+100) as it bleached the
print too much with only 1 minute of toning. As for palladium and
platinum, I found that they gave very nice tones, warm brown and
cool brown (almost black) respectively, but they tended to stain
the paper just as much as the image. The staining could have been
my fault since I reused the toner after toning kallitypes - there
could have been some cross contamination. Hope this helps.
Best to all, Scott
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