From: Ed Buffaloe (EdBuffaloe@UnblinkingEye.Com)
Date: 09/04/02-04:42:00 AM Z
Liam,
You have described exactly the problem I had recently. Interestingly
enough, my first print came out fine. Subsequent prints looked good going
into the final wash, but ended up with a greyish stain. I hate to use
distilled water for every first rinse, but I will if I have to. The boiling
and cooling sounds promising.
I note that most books recommend ammonium chloride. Does sodium
chloride produce a different color? What about the rochelle salt?
Ed
> 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
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