So why did I contemplate another? I think it has to do with using
dichromates, to make up for it. But now that Roman mentions it, I recall
item in Darkroom & Creative Camera by their resident chemist about
burying silver. (Our neighbor buried two of his cats in the yard .....)
Then there was the old Photo Miniature that tells how to make silver
nitrate by shaving silver bullion, boiling it in nitric acid & fusing
it in a crucible. Maybe I'm too gullible, I figured they really did it.
Anyway I recommend Bill Jay's book "Cyanide and Spirits," full of
the episodes, like blowing up the darkroom sink (glycerine and
silver nitrate, making nitro-glycerine), Peter talks about.
> Heating any oxidisible material with potassium nitrate could be rather
> dangerous. (As you no doubt know, gunpowder is a mix of potassium
> nitrate, charcoal and sulphur.) You would need to ensure that the initial
> combustion step was fully completed.
>
> Assuming you got this done without mishap it would probably be possible
> to produce silver nitrate that was useable in salt prints - as you know
> from your reading a lot of photographers used to do this. However a lot
> of photographers used to do some much more dangerous chemistry - and
> probably a reasonable proportion of them died from it either
> spectacularly in a few cases or insidiously in the main.
> > Personally I would get rid of it in small quantities mixed in with normal
SOLD!
> waste. A few years ago I had some radio-active material to dispose
of,
> spent a long time phoning round various officials and readiing all sorts
> of inpenetrable safety documents until finally I got to the real
> authority who told me that if the total amount was less than a certain
> amount the recommended method of disposal was to put it togther with
> other materials in a normal dustbin.
Well, thanks for that, too, Peter. I have remains of 25 grams of uranium
nitrate in cellar (it was floating in the flood, now beached), did some toning
& then decided it was too wicked to use .....(Am far from the "greeniest"
photographer in the world, but do make these mental tradeoffs.) (I like
the term, though, sounds like a movie title.)
Judy