Re: Indirect toning with KRST

On Fri, 26 Mar 2004, Liam Lawless wrote:
 home-made version from a published Kodak recipe; T-55, T-56
> or whatever the hell it was, it contained selenium, ammonium chloride
> and sodium sulphite, and involved boiling for a couple of hours.

Liam, you made me do it -- I got out my old file with the T55 & T56... it
was the part about boiling for a couple of hours that got me -- it seemed
so weird. I just brought it to a boil, partly because it worked and
partly because I didn't want the fumes everyone made such a fuss about in
the kitchen.

T-55:
Dissolve 25 g sodium sulfite in 100 cc hot water, add 1 g selenium powder,
boil til dissolved. [I decided it was dissolved when I thought it
should be, which was quite soon.] Cool. Add 31.5 g ammonium chloride.
Stir. Add 67 cc water. (Don't you love that 31.5 g? And 67 cc !!)

To use, dilute from 1 to 5, to 1 to 9.

Then I had another version, which also worked quite nicely. I'd run out of
ammonium chloride, so I used 12 g ammonium chloride and 19 g ammonium
bromide. (I expect Ruiji to explain why that wouldn't work, but maybe it
was the chlorine in the water... though maybe not, I probably used
distilled.) I called this T-54.

T-56 had the dread stinky sodium sulphide, but in this combo was for
whatever reason relatively bearable.

T-56: 25 g sodium sulphide in 100 cc water, warm the solution. Add 5g
selenium. Heat until selenium is dissolved. Dilute 1:20 for use.

But while we're on the topic, I always wondered why these formulas didn't
use barium sulphide, which, the old books said, had no odor and worked the
same. I got some, but somehow never used it... I also thought it might
have been bad because it was black. In fact it's probably still on the
shelf. Has anyone used it?

Anyway, Liam, I didn't have any of the effects you describe. Though it
could have been the bleach...?

Judy

> Anyway, what I found then was that it did tone, giving soft brown images
> with "diffuse" edges, but the toner put down a copious black precipitate
> and exhausted very quickly; it was necessary to use a large volume and
> replace it two or three times to get a satisfactory print tone. One
> reason I used to make my own toner! Oh, and staining was difficult to
> avoid, with shadows bleeding into highlight areas and all the black
> powder floating around. Perfect results were rare, but they could be
> quite nice!
>
>
>
> Liam
>
Received on Thu Mar 25 21:33:21 2004