Gold Toning question

[domenico Foschi]

I have been following Tim Rudman directions in his excellent book "The Toning Book" fot the bleach-back bath in gold toning.

First of all let me explain you that I toned some ILford warmtone(FB) in straight gold toning(fotospeed AU20) process and I didn't like the continuous blue hue that came out.
I have seen in the past some work of other fellows whose work had gorgeous faint yellow highlights and beautiful subtle blue midtones. I wanted the same effect.
In Rudman's book he explains that to achieve this efect a bleach-back bath is necessary.
I followed his skimpy directions, where a diluted bleach bath is followed by washing and regular gold toning.
To my dismay I saw that the bleach, that I diluted with double the amount of water recommended to slow the process of Ferry, was going awfully fast. I quickly wqashed the print for about 5 min. and immersed the image in the toning bath.
At this point not only the highlights but most of the midtones had disappeared...to never return anymore: I let the print in gold for about ten minutes, but nothing happened.
I could have redeveloped the bleached print probably if I hadn't put it in the fix bath, just by reflex afetr gold toning.

Any tips? What did I do wrong?

[Jim Noel]

I strongly suspect that Dr. Rudman used a different gold toner than the purchased Fotospeed. Most likely gold/borax or gold/thiocyanate. I have no idea which gold toner formula is used by Fotospeed.

Jim

[reellis67]

I'm at work right now so I can't check, but I would suspect that he was using a toner that contained more than just gold chloride, or that he was toning with a sepia toner and following up with the gold toner. Without anything but gold chloride, I don' think you would get any change after heavy bleaching. There are a number of different gold toners out there, and each has different characteristics. Here is a link with a few formulas and a short bit about them.

http://www.jackspcs.com/toner.htm

- Randy