From: Joe Portale (jportale@gci-net.com)
Date: 08/31/02-07:29:48 PM Z
Sandy,
My apologies, I gave you may standard response to people having problems
with salted paper. Terry King and I communicated over several months
concerning a phenominon pretty much what you are discribing. He started
having vailing problems right after moving to another town with a different
water supply. Although, his problems happened during processing. I want to
lean towards paper in this case. But your papers are all good and I have
done well with all of them.
I have relatives in your neck of the woods and they have been telling me
that it has been hotter and wetter than usual. How hot and muggy is it in
your work room? High heat (90+) and high humdity can play havoc with salted
paper. The heat and humdity can speed up reaction time enough that it will
"age" the paper right in front of your eyes. There are some other variables
or pollutants like sulfer dioxide in the air or sulfer compounds in the
paper that can screw things up, I did some experiments some time back, with
humdifying salted paper to see if contrast or anything else would happen, I
did get dichroic fog on a couple of instances.
Is the fog smooth or do you have blotches of higher density in some areas?
Switching gears, the ratio of aluminum and sodium is best 1:1 for solution
stability. I really have not seen any appreciable contrast shifts by
altering the sodium citrate percentages. Ammoniating the silver nitrate
does, but again not to any great degree.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sandy King" <sanking@clemson.edu>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Saturday, August 31, 2002 10:59 AM
Subject: Re: Salted Paper
> Joe,
>
> In fact you can see the stain/veiling fog after exposure, even
> before it goes into the wash. You can see it on all parts of the
> paper that received a coating of silver nitrate, even those areas
> that were masked from the light during exposure. And when you put the
> print in water to wash, either in regular tap water or in distilled
> water, the fog does not wash out. So I don't think it is due to the
> rinse water as the stain is already there prior to beginning the wash.
>
> I am using a classic salting formula, same one described in Crawford,
> Farber and James, plus a plain solution of 12% silver nitrate for the
> sensitizer. I have also added about 5% of citric acid to the silver
> nitrate solution, to no avail. I do not ammoniate the sensitizer. Why
> is it important to keep the ammonium chloride and sodium citrate in
> the same ratio?. The sources I am looking at suggest that the sodium
> citrate can be reduced or eliminated altogether in order to obtain
> more contrast.
>
> I am working with papers that develop very clean with both kallitype
> and vandyyke, those being Fabriano Artistico and Uno, Rives Aquarelle
> and Stonehenge Rising.
>
> Sandy
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >Sandy,
> >
> >Can you explain the stain a little better? There is an effect that is
> >referred to as veiling that acts like a generalized fog over the surface
of
> >the print. This can be caused by excessive iron in the rinse water.
Also,
> >as you already know, paper sizing can have adverse effects. What formula
> >are you using? Is the plain salt and silver nitrate formula? If you are
> >using the ammonium chloride and sodium citrate are you keeping these
> >chemicals in a 1:1 ratio? Have you ammoniated your sensitizer?
> >
> >Joe Portale
> >Tucson, AZ
> >
> >
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