Re: Coffee bean grinder + Chris's prints & blather

[Richard Knoppow <dickburk@ix.netcom.com>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jack Fulton" <jefulton1@comcast.net>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 5:46 PM
Subject: Coffee bean grinder + Chris's prints & blather


> > > Eric and company:  What do you know about the keeping 
> > > qualities of  chemicals in general when they're bought 
> > > in bulk but not used right  away? I recently, for 
> > > instance, threw out a large hunk of ferric  ammonium 
> > > citrate because it had turned into just that -- a really 
> > > hard, solid hunk.
> I'd think, Judy, you could buy a cheap coffee bean grinder 
> and whirl  that stuff to death to make it usable. Outside 
> of course. Just a  thought.
>
> While on that, Does the old link to Engelhard (bought out 
> in '06) in  Alabama still work to purchase the least 
> expensive silver nitrate?
>
> > Now there's talk of, for instance, 60 pound supply of 
> > whatever --  would you use, say a pound a month?  That 
> > could still be 5 years...   On the one hand, I'm using an 
> > old supply of ammonium dichromate,  maybe 30 or 50 years 
> > old, and it seems fine... but on the other,  there was 
> > that FAC.  Is there any general info on the topic ?  Is 
> > it  reliable ?
> Some Ferric Ammonium Citrate has hardened on me before and 
> I just  smashed it up and it worked fine as it is quite 
> soluble. An odd fact  in Wikipedi-ing it was to find it is 
> used in a Scottish soft drink, Im- Bru @ a .002% amount. 
> No wonder we so enjoy the plaid and bagpipes.
>
> Other chemicals I've used have gone off or bad such as 
> Metol (from age  and oxidation), Pot. Bromide (age . . but 
> parts still usable) and  Glycin.
>
> While on the aspect of Glycin, Iv'e tried a great number 
> of times to  use it in a developer formula to print for it 
> is supposed to give a  red tone to one's print. It's an 
> old
> Kodak formula:
> H2O 750 mls
> Sod Sulfite 25 grams
> Glycin 4   "
> Sod Carb 30.4 "
> Pot Brom 1       "
> to make 1 liter
> Dilute 1:2 w/water
>
> Exposures must be adjusted and color is determined by 
> length of  development.
    I wonder if you have a citation to this formula?  Some 
of Kodak's very early formulae had no numbers, this may be 
one of them. The only later Kodak glycin formula I can find 
is D-78, a film developer. Agfa had a couple of developers 
using glycin, Agfa/Ansco 130 and Agfa/Ansco 115. Neither use 
glycin alone. Glycin was popular in the 1930's and 1940's in 
conjunction with paraphenylenediamine for very fine grain 
film developers. PPD alone is too low contrast and loses to 
much speed. Glycin evidently makes a decent fine grain 
developer on its own.
   One problem with the very warm tone developers using 
hydroquinone alone or with glycin is that when diluted to 
yield the warmest tones they do not produce good blacks even 
when the paper is given very high exposures. AGFA 115 is 
better in this respect than AGFA 110, a hydroquinone only 
developer.
   Note that AGFA had some developer formulas published in 
Germany and England with the same numbers but different 
contents than those published in the USA. This can lead to 
some confusion.
   AGFA 130 was sold in cans as a good, general purpose, 
paper developer which was supposed to have greater capacity 
than Kodak D-72 (Dektol). Some find it less likely to give a 
green color to some papers. Actually, 130 is nearly 
identical to D-72 with the addition of 11 grams of glycin 
per liter of stock and 5 grams per liter of bromide instead 
of the 2 grams per liter in D-72. So, you can probably get 
just about identical results by adding the glycin and a bit 
of bromide to Dektol.
    Glycin has gotten expensive and somewhat difficult to 
obtain.

--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@ix.netcom.com