RE: speaking of gold & gold toner

[Liam Lawless <liam.lawless@blueyonder.co.uk>]

Judy,

Yes, the toner will work with POP/alt-silver, though more controllably at
greater dilution (say, at 20% of strength for silver-gelatin).

In my experience gold-thiourea can be inconsistent when used for alt-silver
before fixing, not always toning to the same depth in a given time.  I guess
that washing may have something to do with this - whether any residual
silver nitrate has been left, or chlorides/oxides have formed in the wash.
The other thing I find is that toning continues in the wash that follows,
and even in the wash after fixing if the pre-fix wash has been brief; the
colour change in the wash can be greater than that seen in the toning bath.
pH of the water is very likely a factor.  I therefore give a long final wash
(several hours) to make sure there is no "unfinished business" in my prints.

I don't know if others have had similar experience (well, folks?) - maybe
the water's just funny round here.  Like the people.



Liam

-----Original Message-----
From: Judy Seigel [mailto:jseigel@panix.com]
Sent: 30 May 2002 20:40
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: speaking of gold & gold toner



On Wed, 29 May 2002, Jonathan Bailey wrote:
> Check out the back pages of Post Factory! Gold chloride can be had for
very
> reasonable money - much less than $10/gram.... like they say in NYC -
"never
> pay retail!!"

Actually, a friend of mine WHO LIVES IN NYC paid City Chemical $110 a
gram, the idiot...(But City Chemical moved to Connecticut, so maybe that
explains it ?)

Anyway, I can only assume that was gold melted down from the Taj Mahal by
vestal virgins. Of course he has been re-educated. I forget which of the
sources in P-F's Sources & Services (Section 11 "Precious Metals") he
switched to, maybe Goldsmith, 847-869-7800. Englehard is also very cheap,
but apparently charges $40 for delivery.

However, speaking of gold toner, perhaps someone knows the answer to this
one: Janet Neuhauser wrote (P-F #7) about toning her silver gelatin prints
with Liam Lawless's sepia/ gold combo for beautiful color, split tone,
etc. etc. She found that the formula she used kept very well from session
to session. My question is (Richard???  Liam???) would this formula also
work with POP? If so, why use one that doesn't??

Here's the gold toner from Liam via Janet:

distilled/deonized water -- 750 ml
thiourea  3 g
citric acid  1 g
gold chloride  .5 g
water to 1000 ml

Dissolve in order given. Short fix after toning. Wash well

There's also an optional PH buffer (12 g trisodium citrate) which
Janet omitted.

PS. As old timers on the list may recall, Liam makes his own gold toner.
So you might want to save your old (dental) crowns... (Crowns of recent
years only use plastic, but then gold is pretty cheap these days anyway.)

cheers,

Judy