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RE: Selenium
One thing that can help cut the cost of toning salted paper prints with
gold toners is reduce the amount of gold wasted toning the non-image
area of the print. You can either use thin mask to keep the outside
areas white, so that they do not contain silver that will use toner, or
trim the print before toning.
I have had good results with black paper masks with a hole the size of
my negative cut into them. This allows the clear edge of the negative
to provide a thin black border around the print.
I'm one of those strange (by this group's standards) who likes small
prints, mainly 4x5. I print my negatives on 5x7 paper in an 8x10 frame.
Masking the negative saves around 50% of the gold that would be used
otherwise, since I reduce the area toned from 35 sq. in. to 20 sq. in.
Since the area outside the negative would be DMax if not masked, the
savings is probably greater than half.
-----Original Message-----
From: Sandy King [mailto:sanking@hubcap.clemson.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2000 12:20 PM
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: Re: Selenium
Rod Fleming wrote:
>Hi Sandy
>
>If you are going to go to the length of making up toner, perhaps a
safer
>route might be to make up Gold Chloride toner. All the chems are
available
>and given the very toxic nature of selenium (especially in powder form)
this
>might be a Good Idea. All the sources I have read on toning salt prints
>recommend gold toning rather than selenium anyway.
Rod,
Yes, I am sure gold toning (or platinum) is the way to go with salted
paper, and I bought some gold choloride to mix a gold toner. However,
gold
toner is rather expensive as you know and I don't really have the salted
paper technique down well enough to want to waste gold toner on the
prints
I am currently making!.
However, selenium appears to be a lot more toxic than I had imagined so
I
don't think I will be going there either!
Sandy King
BTW, Argyrotype