Tech Notes

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Development

Again there are so many possibilities developers. For a very grainy, contrasty look try plain hot water! Your exposure times will greatly increase.

One of the old stand bys' and the one I use is Potassium Oxalate in a saturated solution. Standard mixture for potassium oxalate is 454 grams (1 pound) to 48 ozs. Water. Basically the hotter the developer the warmer the print. I use my developer around 150 degrees.

When using room temperature developers most people let the print remain in the developer up to 2 minutes. When using very hot developer, as I do the print need to stay in the developer no more than 15 seconds. When using hot developer the print must go into the developer in one even movement. Any areas of the print that do not get the developer evenly will not "catch up" and you will get uneven developer marks when the print is dry. Another pit fall of using hot developers- most printers feel that as developers age (get darker) they get better. Unless contaminated the developers are mostly good forever. But when used hot after they get to a certain darkness you start to get alot of black developer stains no matter what you do. So if your going to work with very hot developer to get warm tones be prepared to throw out alot of developer.

When printing pure platinum the developer should be at least 90 degrees.

Try aquarium heater to control temperature of chemicals..

I use the amount of platinum to palladium to control tones. There are some other slight side effects but the main reason to add or remove platinum from the emulsion is to cool down or warm up the print.