Re: speaking of gold & gold toner

[Richard Knoppow <dickburk@ix.netcom.com>]

At 03:40 PM 05/30/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>
>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
>
  Toners which work on the silver image of conventional paper should also
work on other silver images although maybe not quite the same way. 
  The toner above appears to be a combination of a Sepia toner (the
thiourea, also known as Thiocarbamide) and Gold. I've not seen one just
like this before. The two most frequent toners are the well known Nelson's
Gold, and older formulas which are essentially hypo-alum types with some
Gold chloride added. 
  The Gold generally shifts the tone toward red from purple-brown.
  I don't know about this formula but Nelson in his patent says that fixing
after toning is necessary due to the possible generation of some halide in
the toner. 
  Tim Rudman's boo, _The Photographer's Master Printing Course_ has a lot
of very reliable material on toning in it. I get the feeling from some of
the older books that the toner formulae are simply passed along and that no
one has actually tried them out. Everything in Tim's book works. 
  
----
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@ix.netcom.com