Re: salt printing questions

Wow, Judy and Peter,
He uses a 15% (!!) fix for only 10-15 prints for 4 mn each, whereas I was
using a 5% for 8 mn...I'll have to switch my habits. But his is much easier
to remember--15 in 15...

I've narrowed it down to 2 fave papers--Crane's Platinotype and Arches
Platine.

Hmmm, Peter, now I don't have to throw out my hydrochloric acid, I can just
use it as hand cream...but you know, I do still have that bottle of it, and
will definitely try it on the sink and bathtub. Oh for a darkroom with
running water.
Chris

----- Original Message -----
From: <jude.taylor@comcast.net>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Cc: "Christina Z. Anderson" <zphoto@montana.net>
Sent: Friday, October 21, 2005 12:58 PM
Subject: Re: salt printing questions

>I finally got my salt prints to clear well enough (on Arches Platine paper)
>by using much agitation both during the rinses before fixing (5 water baths
>at 2 min each, with the last being distilled water); this is after the
>post-exposure salt wash (I also increased to salt concentration by about 3x
>over the amount recommended in James book); and also much agitation during
>the post clearing - final rinse (5 min each in 5 separate trays of
>distilled water). It still looked good after 24 hours.
>
> I've been "reading" a lot of books-on-tape since starting alt-photo
> printing and developing my own film. Smiles!
>
> I decided to used distilled water after the first retry when I noted a
> brown-gray scum in the tray of running water where I did my final rinse,
> even though the pH of my tap water is around neutral, if not slightly
> acidic; the retry was after changing to plain sodium thiosulfate (with
> sodium bicarb) fixer and sodium sulfite clearing bath (as opposed to Kodak
> products), So I don't know for sure yet if it was the extra salt or the
> agitation or the distilled water, though I suspect the agitation helped
> greatly. I will sort that out one variable at a time now that I have one
> successful print!
>
> This reference, sent recently by Eric Nelson, also gives some guidelines
> as to # prints/liter of fixer and clearing bath.
>
> http://albumen.stanford.edu/library/monographs/reilly/
> Cheers!
> Judy
Received on Sat Oct 22 08:21:14 2005