Selenium Toning Dried Prints

[Andre Noble]

I'd like to start selenium toning for archival purposes, and have read previous posts and suggestions by Ansel Adams about it. Many mention a relatively long st ring of wet sequences I honestly do not currently picture myself having the pati ence for (until I get an archival print washer, perhaps.)

Personally, it's seems much more realistic to take a batch of "keepers" from pre viously processed prints, perhaps accumulated over the course of a day or two in the darkroom, and selenium tone them then (ie, after they have already received a hardening fixer treatment, hypo clearing, final wash, and are in the "dry" st ate).

Can anyone with experience selenium toning a dry, previously processed print ple ase tell me of your procedure? I appreciate it. Andre

[Dean Lastoria]

I just soak them for 10 min in water after I have enough to tone. They need to be good and wet though. I don't know if the dry, wet impacts archival issue though -- anyhow, it tones them nicely in a batch -- I flip 5 or six prints through at a time outside and take them out as they tone the degree I want. I do it outside because who wants that stuff inside, and you get the good daylight to judge (That is in an always overcast environment -- if you live in sunnyville, I dunno)

Dean

[Dean Lastoria]

Just saw this "Next Door" on the Lusnet button and Printing and Developing -- right to your questoin.

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=006XwV

Dean

[Dean Lastoria]

Just saw this "Next Door" on the Lusnet button and Printing and Developing -- right to your questoin.

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=006XwV

Dean

[Andre Noble]

Dean, "Whew!", I never saw that site before, it appears to be parallel univers to this Large Format Plane. I recognized some spirits over there, but their embodiment was foreign to me. Scary! Lots of uncapitalized words and poor grammar too. Other than absorbing the knowledge from your recommended thread, I'll pretend that site doesn't exist :>)

So regarding selenium toning dried prints, is it best summed: re- soak in water a few minutes, selenium tone, then final, thorough wash? Is there any re-fixing involved as far as anyone knows? Andre

[Doremus Scudder]

Andre, I use the Ilford archival fix two-bath fixing method, which means (according to Ilfords recommendations!) one minute for bath 1 and one minute for bath 2 in film-strength rapid fixer for up to 40 8x10s per liter. I normally divide the printing and toning sessions thusly: Printing session consists of develop, stop bath one fix, then wash and dry. After evaluating and choosing the keepers, sometimes after several days of printing, I tone. The toning session consists of a water soak of at least 5 minutes, fixing bath 2 for one minute, and then directly into the selenium toner without an intermediate rinse for the desired time. This is followed by a hypo-clearing bath (Kodak recommends 3 minutes, Ilford 10 minutes, so I leave them in for around 10 minutes while fixing and toning more prints), then wash. This way, you can tone large batches of prints at a time. My bottlenecks are always washer capacity and drying space.

I save and reuse the toner, repenishing it with small amounts of the concentrate when toning times become too long, and filtering out the black sediment using coffee filters at the beginning of each toning session. I have a gallon of toner that has been going strong for almost 2 years now with no ill-effects. This saves dumping selenium into the environment unnecessarily.

Hope this helps. ;^D)

[scott jones]

I had a long conversation with David at US Ilford who is the technical support specialist there. I too use the Ilford archival sequence for my prints. That is develop, stop, two non hardening fixer baths for 30 seconds each, 5 minute wash, 10 minute Ilford wash aid, and 5 minute archival water wash. Long after making lots of prints I decide which are the keepers.

David advised me to procede as follows: Resoak in water for two minutes. Selenium tone in your favorite dilution for your favorite time. Use Ilford wash aid for 10 minutes (gets rid of residual thiosulfates) then wash in your washer 30 minutes. He said there is no need to use fixer again at any point in the process.

Hope this helps...

[Andre Noble]

Scott and Doremus, your processes are approximately the same, save where you divide your "dry step", Doremus, which is what I intend to do as well.

I was just wondering, these fix and wash times seem a little short. Are you refering to RC or Fiber paper in these instructions? Thanks. Andre

[Wayne_6692]

Andre - those wash and fix times are for fiber-based papers. The "new theory" is that minimal time in a high strength fixing bath fixes the image while reducing absorption into the paper fibers. Also the formation of insoluable complex molecule chains may also be minimized. It is an "archival" process that reduces wet time and (hopefully) improves the stability of the final print.

[Michael Feldman]

As mentioned by several people above, you can simply re-wash the print for a few minutes, tone, hypo clearing, and then archival wash. This procedure will work fine ?IF? the print was sufficiently washed the first time.

If not sufficiently washed the first time, you have two options. 1) use hypo clearing and rewash to archival standards, or 2) re-fix and go directly to toner from the fixer (see Adams? book "The Print" for details on this method). Any unevenness in the amount of fixer in the print causes problems in the toning.