Re: Salted Paper

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From: Liam Lawless (lawless@ic24.net)
Date: 06/23/00-09:53:29 PM Z


Andre,

Quite a while since I did salt, but yes, a very contrasty neg is needed for
the best results - range 2.5-2.8 or so. Making the fixer alkaline with a
teaspoon of carbonate reduces density loss in the fix. Very weak fix does
not preserve the density (to a useful degree), but can easily lead to
incomplete fixing; with alkali, a much stronger fix can be used.

The fixer I used to use is as follows. With a sufficiently contrasty neg
(and sufficient exposure!), it should give excellent results.

Sodium thiosulphate (cryst.) 100g
Sodium carbonate (anh.) 10g
Water to make 1000ml

Some fixer recipes I've seen include a few grams of sodium chloride, the
purpose of which is presumably to convert any silver nitrate remaining at
the fixing stage into chloride, preventing staining if you haven't gold
toned first (toning after the fix also works). I didn't find salt
necessary, or that it made any difference, but it is important to wash quite
well after printing (10 minutes or so), as residual silver nitrate can cause
stains in the gold or hypo bath.

Two things I see from your notes: (1) you salted twice, and (2) your salting
solution contained gelatin. I got much better results salting once and
silvering twice; the idea that the sensitised paper should contain more
silver than salt, and, to a point, the higher the silver to salt ratio, the
stronger and brighter the resulting image. By salting twice, you're
reducing the silver:salt ratio. I preferred the colours obtained without
gelatin in the salting solution - only a personal preference, maybe, but
worth trying... ?

One other thing. Many of the salting formulae I've seen in books use the
same ingredients - ammonium chloride, citric acid, and, if I remember
rightly, something else. Sodium chloride also works, as you know, but so do
many other salts - giving different colours (though the differences are
smaller if gelatin is included). After much trial and error, the best
salting solution I came up with is:

Sodium chloride 20g
Citric acid 15g
Potassium sodium tartrate (Rochelle salt) 15g
Thymol (2% solution in isopropyl alcohol) 2ml
Water to make 1000ml

I always found table salt just fine. Thymol is optional, but without it the
solution goes mouldy in a few weeks. Salting is by immersion, followed by 2
coat of 12% silver nitrate, brush coated (drying in between!) With big
prints I occasionally got streaks through uneven coating, but that shouldn't
happen with 2 coats of silver. The best way I found to do it was to quickly
brush on loads of silver, let it soak 30 seconds, then blot it off with
blotting paper; after blotting, it's ready for the second coat only 2 or 3
minutes later. Wasteful, perhaps, but I felt the prints were worth it.

Vaguely recall that I didn't get good results with (home made) selenium
(which should come after fixing), but in those days I think I was using it
too strong.

Hope this helps.

Liam


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