This is not only great for workshops but fun and cheaper for students.
You can get hydrochloric acid and caustic soda from the hardware store;
both areused for cleaning drains. The HCl is sold as spirits of salt.
Citric acid is got from the home made wine supplies shop; it is used for
cleaning wine bottles in association with potassium metabisulphite, for
clearing gum prints, which can be bought from trhe same source.
Albumen is bought from the cake department in the supermarket where its use
is for hardening icing on cakes. Soft icing is made by adding glycerine
which can be got from the same place, but when I was experimenting with
glycerine development of platinum prints, Delia Smith had just given the
recipe on television and the nation's cooks had snapped up the whole
supply.
Tartaric acid is also used in cooking as is cream of tartar which is used
as a raising agent in scones. When I first made kallitypes
I substituted cream of tartar for the tartaric acid in the recipe . The
result was a beautiful coffee cream coloured print. The
teacakeotype. The cocacolatype is made by developing platinum prints in
diet Coke.
Potassium citrate used to be available from the pharmacyas it was the
standard cure for cystitis . Light magnesium carbonate for thickening
bromoil inks can also be got from the pharmacy where its phamaceutical use
is as a cure for both stomach upsets and for smelly feet.
Rabbit skin size or glue from the art shop is a good source of gelatine. If
the shop sells the size it should also sell pumice powder..
The two combined makea first class size for kallitypes and cyanotypes onto
shiny surfaces such as glazed tiles.
Ferric ammonium citrate can be got from suppliers to the food industrybut
only in industrial quantities.
All this and more is apart from the strange things that chiropodists do
with hypo and silver nitrate.
Terry King