Dick responded to the question I buried in an earlier post re:water by
emailing me directly and I thought it would be of interest to all list
members.
Bill
______________________________
>Bill,
>
>I'm awake!
>
>We have a reverse osmosis system for making purified water. This is said to
>be as good as a single distillation system but not quite as good as a
>triple distilling system. Bottom line: far better than is needed. The only
>thing I have ever noticed using tap water both in Van Nuys and Santa Fe is
>when dissolving silver nitrate you may get some pearlescence (sp? my
>checker has a clue!) due to the chlorine in the tap water.
>
>We now ship all of our developers as "dry paks" since we no longer make our
>own developers in situ. It doesn't make sense to ship water all over the
>place. Especially since we do a large foreign business and shipping water
>airmail to Finland is kind of dumb.
>
>When we made our own, I'd neutralize sodium hydroxide and oxalic acid in a
>50 gallon tank. Since I was using a technical grade for both the hydroxide
>and acid, the result was a little off color which is to be expected. For a
>developer this is presents no problem at all and if put into a 1 liter
>beaker and held up to the light it looked pretty clear, it was only in the
>larger 50 gallon volume that the slight dirtiness was apparent. I had a
>pretty good size submersable fountain pump hooked up to two of those
>household water filter cartridges with plastic fittings. The first filter
>was a 20 micron plain filter the second was a charcoal cartridge. The rig
>was: pump-fitting-cartridge-cartridge-> The whole mess got tossed into the
>tank and turned on. The rig just laid in the bottom and pumped for a few
>hours or overnite. In about 2 or three hours the solution turned crystal
>clear, white with no color -- pretty as angels pee I used to say. It would
>turn clear with just the plain filter but you needed the charcoal to remove
>the color. Used this system on a variety of developers we used to make and
>you would intially get a wide range of dirtiness. This was just for
>esthetic and marketing reasons. The developers were perfectly fine
>unfiltered.
>
>
>Well, I guess I've gone astray. All in all I think that your water system
>would have to be plenty messed up to cause any problems in development or
>clearing. Not that it couldn't, but I think most people are overly
>concerned about it. On the other hand, using some purified water can't
>hurt. For mixing metal salts and the more $$$ stuff, I'd always use
>distilled or purified just on principle.
>
>I mean, like I had a customer who threw out two big trays because her
>assistant put mixed up the fix and developer in the wrong ones.
>
>--Dick
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>At 02:02 PM 2/17/98 -0800, you wrote:
>>>Use of distilled water with the platinum/palladium process is quite
>>>important. this is especially true with water sources with high mineral
>>>content. I had an ex business partner who mixed our developer with the
>>>well water. We ended up reclearing many prints due to excessive
>>>minerals in the paper. He is a a good printer but got lazy with our
>>>process. He tried to use a water purifier from Wal Mart. Not good.
>>>The price for distilled here is about $.50 a gallon, and the same for
>>>purified which also works for most applications.
>>>
>>>EJ Neilsen
>>>
>>
>>I think the answer also depends on the quality the tap water you begin
>>with. I have a double filtration system whose last stage uses carbon
>>activated filters. I use that water for mixing sensitizer, developer and
>>clearing agents and have not found any problems. But I'm also applying
>>filtration to water (San Francisco muncicipal water district) which isn't
>>too bad to start with. I know other regions have many more minerals in
>>their tap water so even with filtration they'd have different solutions
>>than I do.
>>
>>Are you reading this, Dick? What does B&S use when mixing sensitizer and
>>developer?
>>
>>Bill
>>
>> *************************************************************************
>> WILLIAM LAVEN PHOTOGRAPHY
>>
>> Offering Platinum/Palladium printing services and workshops and tutorials
>> in Pt/Pd printing and other areas of photography (Zone System, etc.)
>>
>> 1931 23rd Street, San Francisco, CA, 94107
>> 415-647-9432 (voice) 415-647-9438 (fax)
>> wmlaven@platinotype.com
>> www.platinotype.com
>>
>> *************************************************************************
>>
>
>Bostick & Sullivan
>PO Box 16639, Santa Fe
>NM 87506
>505-474-0890 FAX 505-474-2857
><http://www.bostick-sullivan.com>http://www.bostick-sullivan.com
>
*************************************************************************
WILLIAM LAVEN PHOTOGRAPHY
Offering Platinum/Palladium printing services and workshops and tutorials
in Pt/Pd printing and other areas of photography (Zone System, etc.)
1931 23rd Street, San Francisco, CA, 94107
415-647-9432 (voice) 415-647-9438 (fax)
wmlaven@platinotype.com
www.platinotype.com
*************************************************************************