From: Liam Lawless (liam.lawless@blueyonder.co.uk)
Date: 08/31/02-09:37:51 AM Z
Sandy,
Long time since I've done salt, but think I recognise the problem. With me,
general staining - within the image area, not margins - occurred during the
final wash. Greyish-brown colour, and could get really bad with a long wash
(toning didn't avoid it). I believe poor quality tap water (in the first
wash) is to blame; Terry King had the problem even worse than me and said
his prints stained as soon as his prints hit the first wash.
I've also had the problem with another silver process. It doesn't strike in
all locations, but the cure is to give an initial rinse in
distilled/deionised for 2-3 minutes, and then continue the first wash in tap
water for as long as required. I don't think it's chlorides in the water
that are responsible because something else that worked was to give a first
rinse in boiled and cooled tap water, which seems to suggest that dissolved
oxygen might be the reason.
As for directions for salt, I don't think you need them except to point out
(as you're probably aware) that you can use many different salting
solutions. The commonest one (in all the textbooks) is, I think, sod.
chloride, citric acid and sod. citrate, but I got what I considered much
better results with my own, of, if I remember, sod. chloride and Rochelle
salt. The paper also makes a difference; on heavily buffered papers like
some of the Arches, you'll get a proportion of silver carbonate forming when
you silver, and this gives the image colour a pronounced red shift. You'll
also see this effect with VDB.
Hope we're talking about the same thing & that this is some use.
Liam
Original Message-----
From: Sandy King [mailto:sanking@clemson.edu]
Sent: 31 August 2002 16:06
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: Salted Paper
I wonder if anyone on the list has made top quality salted paper
prints? If so I would really appreciate a good set of working
directions. I have been playing around with salted paper for several
years but have never managed to completely eliminate the problem of
overall stain. The stain is visible as soon as the print is out of
the first wash, and never clears. I always use distilled water for
mixing both the silver nitrate and salting solutions, and have used
a variety of papers, with no relief from the stain.
Thanks for any comments or help with this problem, and again, I would
really appreciate getting a specific set of working instructions from
someone who has actually made good salted paper prints.
Sandy King
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