fixer question

[Ty G]

I've been doing wet-plate photography for over a year as my main job. Yet, I have a question for the darkroom guys. I've been using sodium thiosulfate mostly; but I'm tempted to go to cyanide due to the fact that the kcn washes out of the emulsion(collodion) so easily. I do a lot of events where everybody is walking around looking at my darkbox and I would like a safer effective method, so here are my questions. .. How effective would hypo-clear be on metal or glass plates? Amonium thiosulfate has a much quicker clearing time, so would it be better for me to use amm. thio. and hypo-clear?

Any educated thoughts on the idea would be greatly appreciated. Ty Guillory

[Gene McCluney]

As far as I have been able to tell, from reading, the Cyanide produces the best image tone if you are doing tintypes or ambrotypes, where the negative needs to appear as a creamy positive image. I have read that hypo, or sodium thiosulfate fixers do not render the fixed image as light in tone.

[Robert Hughes]

Yikes, they actually still sell Potassium Cyanide? That's about like selling Nitric Acid to teenagers (just about anything soaked in Nitric becomes an explosive). And cyanide and nitric makes, well, don't try it at home...

[Ole Tjugen]

Potassium Cyanide is an indispensible reactant in many chemical processes. There are far more dangerous chemicals being sold - and used - than cyanides.