Some questions about Albumen printing..

Cor Breukel (cor@ruly46.medfac.leidenuniv.nl)
Mon, 23 Jun 1997 12:49:54 +0200 (MET DST)

I would like to try the Albumen printing process, and after reading and
digging in the archives I came up with the following questions, any
feedback on them would be greatly appreciated:

1) The Albumen.
Rather than messing around with egg-white I would like to try BSA (Bovine
Serum Albumen), purified, powder, off which I "happen" to have a jar full.
I guess that the cow Albumen should work the same as chicken Albumen. Any
idea about the concentration? ("educated guess"/startin point : an egg is
about 50 g, consisting of 58% Albumen (only the white I guess)...). Off
course I have to add the Ammonium Chloride, but what about the glacial
acid..is it nessecairy for the albumen "purification" or for the printing
process?

2)The Coating, Sensitizing & Toning
Everything I read seems to indicate that one should coat & sensitize by
floating the paper on the solutions. Is there a special reason, or can one
also use brush or rod-coating. And for the toning, does one need a tray
full of gold toner, or can one also "coat" with toner?

3)The Gold Toning
As I understand (gold) toning of an albumen print is almost an essential.
It seems that there are a lot of toning recipies around. Could one start
with a commercial Gold toning solution from say Kodak, and what is the
composition of such a commercial toner; is it Gold chloride?

Thanks in advance!

Cor Breukel

http://ruly70.medfac.leidenuniv.nl/~cor/cor.html
"The Infrared Gallery"
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