Re: "serum of milk"
Hi Judy,
Adding vinegar to milk indeed produces whey, as Dave suggested.
However, adding ammonia or sodium carbonate to the mixture to
neutralize the remaining liquid might give problems later on. I would
suggest sodiumhydroxide for this purpose. Ammonia forms ammonium-ions
in your solution of whey, which, after printing with various colours
could interfere with the colour you intended. I'm not sure this will
actually happen, but it's a risk. The most 'neutral' basic chemical to
use is sodiumhydroxide. In the Netherlands, this is sold in hardware-
and drugstores as a plunger (to clear up your sink, sorry, my
knowledge of technical terms in english is not that extensive....).
It's not the liquid plunger, but the one that has white, small balls
in a container (chemically: NaOH, 99+%). With acid, the basic part of
this stuff just forms water (OH- and H+ makes H2O). What's left are
some sodium-ions, which will probably never interfere with the rest of
your proces....
to do this, dissolve a little bit of these balls (NaOH) into water (be
carefull: add the balls to the water, not the other way around...).
And then just add little bits of this solution to your whey, until a
test-strip for pH shows that your whey is neutral (=pH=7). These
pH-test-strips can often be found in stores where they sell stuff to
make you own wine and beer, maybe even your local pharmacy has some
for you....
hope this works for you!
kind regards,
Dirk-Jan
(or call me deejay, as most of my friends do, and which is probably
easier to pronounce for non-dutch speaking folks!)
2008/6/25 Judy Seigel <jseigel@panix.com>:
> Thanks Dave for giving me permission to add vinegar... I think I still have
> some powdered milk from a bit of casein printing. The only cooking "recipe"
> I found so far is in my very first cookbook (which I bought in 1957, because
> it was what I was raised on, "Settlement House Cookbook" with the slogan
> "the way to a man's heart" over a big heart on the cover with a bunch of
> moppets in rows holding cookbooks leading up to it.)
>
> First edition was 1901. It was already a relic when I bought it, but every
> so often it has something no other book has & I love it. (And I did keep the
> man's heart like it promised ! -- or so he assures me -- And ALSO made a gum
> print of the cover including the strips of tape holding the thing together.
>
> My thought now is that a variables test is called for. I'll make up your
> formula, this book's "lemon whey", just omitting the sugar, and if they have
> it, Katharine's dried whey from the health food store... There's also one
> possibility of a cheese store off Houston Street ("Joe's) and while I'm at
> it I'll get some cheese.
>
> Then compare results (if any). Don't know how long that will take, but my
> inner process junky doesn't care. And just think: this is only the paper
> size ! The emulsion itself is yet to come.
>
> (I"ve got lots of silver nitrate & vinegar, but not sure of some of the
> other chemicals... which shows that you never know in case you didn't know
> that. I expected to never buy chemicals except dichromate again in this
> life -- or the next either.
>
> best & thanks again to all...
>
> PS. Dave -- is that from some exotic recipe your mom made, or.....?
>
> Judy
>
>
>
> On Tue, 24 Jun 2008, Dave S wrote:
>
>> Judy, I guess you can try what casein painter/printer do: use non-fat milk
>> (either buy the non-fat milk or use non-fat milk powder + water). That
>> takes
>> care of the fat.
>>
>> Then add vinegar. The casein will curdle up. Add the vinegar until no more
>> solid is forming. Filter. Then you will have separated the casein and the
>> fluid portion of milk.
>>
>> I somehow thought whey is used to described the solid part, but the
>> definition says otherwise; anyway, you can separate the solid and the
>> liquid
>> parts by adding acid.
>>
>> If you do that, after you filtered out the solid, you might also want to
>> add
>> ammonia or sodium carbonate (washing soda) to the solid. Then you get
>> liquid
>> casein or casein bichromate painting.
>>
>>
>> Dave
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Judy Seigel [mailto:jseigel@panix.com]
>>> Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 6:40 PM
>>> To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
>>> Subject: Re: "serum of milk"
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 25 Jun 2008, Don Sweet wrote:
>>>
>>>> Serum of milk (Physiol. Chem.), the whey, or fluid portion of milk,
>>>> remaining after removal of the casein and fat. Webster's Revised
>>>> Unabridged Dictionary, C 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Don Sweet
>>>>
>>>
>>> So I re-checked my (older) unabridged... I'd been looking on
>>> the boldfaced entry line -- & there it was in the body of the
>>> definition, but even knowing it was there, hard to read (did
>>> I mention that I need new
>>> glasses?)... But where's the recipe? And how did they do it
>>> on fabric,
>>> the creeps?
>>>
>>> Meanwhile, anyway (anywhey?) back to the cookbook...
>>>
>>> thanks,
>>>
>>> J.
>>
>>
>>
>