Well, I keep roaming the internet for information and ran across a wonderful web site created by a guy from Slovenia who has built a business pouring and selling his own home made silver gelatin "Zebra" dry plates. He is very thorough in his explanations and in his videos and blogs. He pours his plates using a syringe, which seems a lot easier than the traditional method. He also has developed a way to produce better and lighter Tintypes and Ambrotypes on black glass by adding Potassium Thiocyanate to the developer. I definitely want to try that.
Randy came by for a while this afternoon and I updated him on what I had learned about silver nitrate bath maintenance, pouring plates, etc... We checked the density, and it was way off the 1.07 mark, all the way in the 1.4's. The pH was also way off at 5.5, which could explain the fogging. We also noticed a deposit at the bottom of the jar that looked like silver precipitate, same stuff that I found at the bottom of the failed sensitizing tank. Randy practiced pouring some plates with a syringe and a mixture of water, gelatin and watercolorI concocted to practice with without wasting expensive and smelly collodion. He found it easier, if still tricky. My thumb is in such bad shape right now that I cannot do much.
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