Richard Sullivan (richsul@earthlink.net)
Tue, 18 May 1999 08:33:48 -0600
Andy,
You didn't mention the ingredients but this is a common occurrence when
using old formulas. Quite often one of the chemicals was hydrated, that is
it had more water in it than todays version. Today there is a tendency to
use dehydrated versions. This is often the case with the alkalis. In this
way the companies do not have to ship a lot of water around. Check a
chemical manual and see if one of the components has different water
numbers like .2H20 or .9H20, if so either use the higher numbered one or
calculate the water percentage and use that much less of it.
The old formulas for Kallitype black developers used Borax with 9H20
whereas the common borax today is drier. This results in a tray full of
sludge if you use todays version with the old formula.
In some other cases one of the ingredients is a solvent and it is offset by
a either it or the other components being wetter due to atmospheric
humidity absorption. Some chemicals are like cake flour and you have to
adjust according to weather conditions.
If while you are formulating the toner as you add one compound, a
precipitate is dissolving but it does not all dissolve, it is a good bet
you can keep adding what you are adding until it does.
Van Dyke formulas vary and will kick out a silver white precipitate. This
is solved by adding more of the tartaric acid until it does.
Hope this helps
--Dick Sullivan
At 05:20 AM 5/18/99 -0700, you wrote:
>Thanks for all the answers! Now it's my turn:
>
>1. I used distilled water and followed the directions
>exactly.
>
>2. The 'powder' in step 2 never disolved the first
>time.
>
>3. There seemed to be way too much precipitate in step
>two the second time, but I tried using it anyway, with
>no results, i.e. color shift, in about 10 minutes or
>more.
>
>4. There is no hardener in the fix, but I was using
>Kodak N FB and Ilford MGIV FB.
>
>5. I'm not doing this for archival purposes. As
>someone said, the are other easier gold toners, as
>well as selenium for that (alhough Dr. Henry had his
>doubts about selenium (I'll bet that gets a rise out
>of some...)). I'm trying to get some brown/chocolate
>tone in the denser areas of the print, but little or
>none in the lighter areas while trying to keep the
>base pure white. Because I want the base white and
>little or no tone in the lighter areas, I don't want
>to use a warm tone paper.
>
>6. Split toning methods?
>
>Any suggestions? Thanks, again!
>
>Andy
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu Oct 28 1999 - 21:39:34