RE: Photographer Arrested & potassium oxalate

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From: Eric Neilsen (e.neilsen@worldnet.att.net)
Date: 12/12/02-08:21:05 PM Z


The important question is color, What color Is the crystal? Clear - I
would guess PO. If greenish, then I would go with some iron complex
that forms from the cleared chemistry from previous prints. Some or the
iron will be converted and some will not be. As you develop your
prints, these are carried into your solution. After many months you
will have quite a stew of complex ions.

I have seen some rather large green crystals form in bottles of
potassium oxalate. Do you use several trays or the one tray method? If
you use multiple trays, I would suspect loss of water due to evaporation
and carrier over with your paper, even more true for heavier papers, and
a resultant solution that can no longer suspend the PO in solution.

Check your fresh solution for Sp Gr and use that as a guide to replenish
your developer with water. If you see your printing times get longer
and prints gaining in contrast and getting grainy, we are adding too
much water. I don't have the Sp Gr handy, but 1.063 is sticking in my
mind. That may be off.

Eric Neilsen Photography
4101 Commerce Street
Suite 9
Dallas, TX 75226
http://e.neilsen.home.att.net
http://ericneilsenphotgraphy.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Mateo [mailto:mateo@mateoleyba.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 11:55 AM
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: Re: Photographer Arrested & potassium oxalate

on 12/12/02 5:26 AM, Garry Lewis at glewis@ftw.nrcs.usda.gov wrote:

>> Has any REAL newspaper or news outlet verified this story.
>
> as a matter of fact, I did do a Google search and checked the on line
archives
> of both
> Denver papers and came up with nothing for the dates or for the name
Maginnis.
> As of now,
> I'm filling it as unverified urban legend.

Arrested

I am a photo editor at one of the Denver newspapers and passed this
story on
to the appropriate word editors last week after we received an e-mail
from a
person claiming to be a friend of this Maginnis guy. I'll see if anyone
was
ever able to talk to this guy.

Potassium Oxalate

I was printing some stuff and had to break out my jug of potassium
oxalate
#5. When I picked up the container it sounded like a giant maraca. I
heated
up the juice to about 140¹ but the crystals would not go away. I
filtered
them out and used it anyway as I already had the exposure going. The
print
looked OK, but I only had time to do the one so I have nothing to judge
it
against. Would it be the PO or the Dichro that formed the crystals? If
it's
the Dichro, I would assume that I'm not getting the full contrast
effect, if
it's the PO, would it even matter? Has anyone had this same experience?
I
know the short answer is to mix up fresh stuff to be sure, just curious.
(And I rate mixing things right up with processing film, it sucks.)

mateo


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