keeping qualities of a chrome alum solution?
hi, list is pretty slow lately. isn't it APIS-weekend? guess all people are there instead of in front of their computers...it seems like all the alt.proc. discussion on the internet came to a halt. anyway, does someone have any experience with the keeping qualities of a chrome alum solution? say: 10% or so. right now, i'm using 0.2 -0.3 grams per 100ml of gelatin solution (5%) - appr. calculated down from sandy king's 3gr/ liter. it seems to work fine, but i'm only using chrome alum for a very short time now, so i don't have much experience with it. measuring the powder each time is annoying and probably inconsistant, so i'd rather switch to 3ml of a 10% solution. but this would only work if a chrome alum solution has a decent shelf life (a year or so) in distilled water. making a new solution every other week would be wasteful and as annoying. i'm asking the list up front, because if the solution went bad, i'd probably would only notice it in the quality of the prints getting worse. and this can have a lot of reasons. so, with some bad luck, i could be working with bad chrome alum and never notice it or blame it on other things. anyone ever have a chrome alum solution go bad? thanks phritz |