Announcing New Process: The Electrumtype Kary

[Richard Puckett]

Electrum is a naturally formed alloy of gold and silver. Using Richard Sullivan's Extravagatype and Marek Matusz's platinum Satista variant as a starting point, I have succeeded in printing a gold-silver (electrum) image. The quality is very high -- my first rough prints are washing in the bath upstairs. I will have samples up (http://www.texaschrysotype.com) in a few days (after I tinker with toning and such).

The Electrumtype Kary dispenses with ferric oxalate or ammonium ferric oxalate. Instead, I use either ammonium ferric ferrous oxalate (AFFO) or ammonium ferric ferrous citrate (AFFC), with 10% gold, and 4% silver nitrate as the developer. The AFFO yields a gray-scale image typically with some purple staining around the edges of the image; the AFFC yields a red-brown image (rather like a uranotype) that mercifully dulls in the clearing to a milk chocolate brown. I have not yet investigated to any significant extent, but I am quite certain a wash in any of various weak acids (citric, nitric, hydrochloric, lactic, phosphoric, etc) or sodium hyposulfite will alter the tone. Neither have I bothered to tone the images in any of selenium, gold, platinum, palladium, etc.,

Print out is to be minimized. Here in the bright Austin sun today, 25 to 30 seconds was about right.

Basic Formula

1. Prepare AFFO by adding 4 to 8 drops of 1% ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to 10 ml of 40% ammonium ferric oxalate. Cap bottle tightly and shake it for about 15 seconds, minimum.
Alternatively, prepare AFFC by adding 4 to 8 drops of 1% ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to 16 ml of 25% ammonium ferric citrate. Cap bottle tightly and shake it for about 15 seconds, minimum.

2. For a 4x5 or 5x7 contact print, count 5 drops of the AFFO or AFFC into a shot glass.

3. Add 1 drop 10% gold. Note: you can almost certainly use a weaker dilution; I have not yet tested that.

4. Swirl solution and brush onto any paper suitable for my Texas Chrysotype process (AFFO-based): Arches Platine and Clearprint 16# rag cotton vellum work in the rag cotton papers; Canson Vidalon vellum and Canson White Colorline work in the cellulose papers, for example.

5. Allow paper to dry.

6. Place a strong negative in contact with the paper, and place all in a contact frame.

7. Exposure is very rapid, so don't get distracted. With either AFFO or AFFC you want a weak print out, a ghostly image with slightly stronger dark areas but the mid-grays through highlights still not printing in.

8. Wearing heavy rubber gloves that go as high as possible, (see my Youtube video on my presentation at the APIS for the kind of gloves I wear), develop in 10ml 4% silver nitrate (I dissolve my silver nitrate in warm water, 90 to 100 degrees, to get it to clear). I use an acrylic roller to roll the silver across the print. Results are instantaneous.

9. I wash in a first bath of water to get rid of the silver nitrate. That stuff is horrible, get it on your skin and the next day you will notice black spots appearing. They will continue to appear for several days.

10. Clear in 10% sodium sulfite (hypo clear) for 10 minutes, then wash in water for 2 minutes.

11. Soak in 10% Tetrasodium EDTA for 10 minutes, then water for two.

12. Soak in DILUTE fixer, which is 1 part fixer at normal paper strength added to 20 parts water, for 3 to 4 minutes.

WARNING: Prints bleach out in normal lighten significantly in a standard dilution of fix.

13. After a 2 minute wash, soak in sodium sulfite or hypo clear.

14. Wash Arches Platine for 20 minutes, vellums for 10.

I will be updating my site at http://www.texaschrysotype.com regularly, as well as my blog at richardpuckett.tumblr.com, and will post a video on Youtube (and elsewhere) within six days. Please feel free to contact me with ideas and/or questions. richardepuckett@texaschrysotype.com

 

[MDR]

Sounds interesting thank you for sharing.

 

[Richard Puckett]

A clarifying note about exposure. Although ammonium ferric ferrous citrate can be used, I greatly prefer ammonium ferric ferrous oxalate, as AFFO makes determining when to pull the print and develop it out much easier: the AFFO image will look nearly fully printed out, just soft with the highlights still bright, rather like a low-contrast print that is a stop too bright. Whichever light-sensitive compound you do use, if you over-expose, if the print develops out too dark, you can often save it by fixing it out in less dilute fixer, perhaps 1:5 fixer to water. The most critical point to make about developing out by rolling, pushing or pouring silver nitrate on the image is you must get it right, you must do it evenly top to bottom and left to right. Any unevenness will present itself as a pale blue splotch (or splotches) on the image. There's no getting rid of those.

 

[Dr Croubie]

I'm more interested in that, if it's an alloy of gold and silver, how much does each print cost?

 

[Richard Puckett]

I estimate $1.25 for each 4x5 I printed when developing the formula. That would work out to $5 for an 8x10 on Arches Platine. About the same as printing a pure gold 8x10 using my Texas Chrysotype process, or an 8x10 gold-platinum per my Karytype process.

Breakdown of cost:

1 gram of tetrachloroauric acid or 10ml of 10% gold chloride costs about $45 USD. With the Bostick-Sullivan eyedroppers I used, there are 24 drops to 1 ml. I used 1 drop for each 4x5 while coming up with this formula. That is 1/240th of $45 or about .20 for a 4x5 print.
30 grams of silver nitrate costs around $35 USD. A 4% solution is 750 ml. I use 10 ml for each 4x5, so that means I can make 75 4x5's for $35, or roughly .50 a print.
Sodium sulfite, tetrasodium EDTA, tap water, and fixer I calculate cost .25 for a 4x5.
I was testing on Arches Platine since that is a de facto standard for quality and reliability. From Freestyle, AP costs about $1.80 USD for each 11x15 sheet. I get about 6 test contacts from each sheet, so that's .30.

 

[Richard Puckett]

Electrumtype Kary Sample: Fountain, Natl Gallery Art, DC

Here is a promised Electrumtype Kary. This one was printed on Arches Platine using the ammonium ferric ferrous oxalate: 1 drop Au, 5 drops AFFO. I suspect the over-brushed area is reddish-brown, rather than purple, because I used a fairly old scrap of Platine, one leftover from last October. Not sure how the image resizes or if it does. It is a 4x5 scanned at 300 dpi. Minimal reworking, just enough to reverse my HP G4050 scanner's mauling of the image.

 

[MDR]

Could it be a result of the ammonium ferric ferrous oxalate instead of the old platinum. Iron does rust
I actually quiet like the split tone you've got and think that it might work quiet well for some subjects/objects
Again thank you for sharing

 

[Richard Puckett]

There's no platinum in the formula -- I gather you misread, for Arches Platine is a hot pressed 310 gsm rag cotton paper, not a metal salt. Arches Platine is superb for printing gold (and platinum and palladium -- though I prefer Revere Platinum for those two metals). And the reddish-brown tone at the edges is not in any way a result of oxidized ammonium ferric ferrous oxalate. Gold behaves rather differently from platinum and palladium as regards color: the color gold exhibits varies depending on the humidity / moisture in the sensitizer at the time the sensitizer is exposed to UVB light. The edges show a different color because the sensitizer is brushed on more lightly at the edges than in the center and middle areas of the print. As a result, the sensitizer at the extreme edges dried further (during the 15-20 minute dry down in the dark) than did the sensitizer at the middle and center. If I wanted to minimize the split tone, I could tape off the edges and eliminate the overbrushing, and take greater care to brush the sensitizer evenly across the entire image area. Alternatively, I could just let the whole thing dry longer -- half an hour or so -- and that would also minimize split toning.

But as I noted in my post, the Arches Platine was old -- I bought it last October to use for my presentation at the APIS in Santa Fe. The sheet was a roughly 10"x7" scrap in a pile of paper scraps on a shelf. I would have discarded it except that it was the last Arches Platine I had on hand. I was delighted when the gold dutifully printed out (without looking like a chrysotype s print -- except at the extreme edges).

 

[Richard Puckett]

I have posted a video, in three parts (my video joiner software can't handle the files), on Youtube.

Part One: Prepping
[video=youtube;qBh3Q6bMUFM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBh3Q6bMUFM[/video]
Part Two: Printing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7USBNdN0zA
Part Three: Developing and Clearing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMQkkK2ILv4

 

[Richard Puckett]

I've been working with the electrumtype kary pretty steadily this week after photographing Kary herself at the Blanton Museum here in Austin over Memorial Day weekend. The sky was overcast with intermittent thinning to haze that gave that wonderful glowy yet soft light. What I have learned is:
1) Boost contrast by reducing the number of drops of ammonium ferric ferrous oxalate from 5 or 6 down to 3 or 4. This leave less AFFO for the silver nitrate to develop out, resulting in higher contrast.

2) Lower contrast by using more drops of AFFO OR by preparing a low contrast AFFO solution. To do so, add just 3 or 4 drops of 1% ascorbic acid to 10 ml of 40% ammonium ferric oxalate. Less ascorbic acid converts less of the ferric iron to ferrous iron. Print out is lowered and contrast is lowered.

3) It is perfectly possible to develop out a print even if you use half as much 4% silver nitrate as I originally specified (which came from Marek Matusz' article on alternativephotography.com. For a 4x5, instead of 10ml of 4% silver nitrate, you can mix 5ml with 5ml of corn syrup. Yes, corn syrup. It's thick and it's not interactive with silver nitrate. 10 ml of solution gives you plenty to develop out a 4x5 and the extra viscosity from the corn syrup makes it much easier to spread. I have not yet tested larger negatives, but I cannot imagine any reason whatsoever why 3 or 4 times as much (15 ml AgNO3+15 ml corn syrup, or 20 ml of each) would not suffice for an 8x10. BTW, that makes this the least expensive process for printing out any of the noble metals...


4) Clearing is now 1. wash in cool running water for 2 or 3 minutes; 2. Fix in fixer that is absolutely no more than 1 part fixer to 20 parts of water. I dared try 1 part fixer to 19 parts of water and left the print in for about7 minutes. It lightened visibly. Even with 1 part fixer in 20 parts water you do not want to fix longer than 5 minutes. Absolute max. I left a print in that for 10 minutes and it was bleached out. 3. Wash in water. 4. soak in strong (~15%) sodium sulfite for 15 minutes. 5. Wash in water. 6. Soak in 15% tetrasodium EDTA for 15 minutes. Wash for 30 minutes.

I have also switched to Arches Aquarelle hot press watercolor paper. (Arches Platine remains unavailable for now.) Aquarelle is sized internally and externally with gelatin, to which gold is quite amicable. The hot press surface is essential. Cold or rough will not work. The image that develops out is dark brown, rather similar to traditional warm silver gelatin prints. I like the look a whole lot. On Arches Platine the look is more like a Texas Chrysotype, albeit with more purple around the edges than I like. When I lay my hands on Platine again, I'll figure out what first bath I need to eliminate that purple. Probably a strong sodium sulfite bath -- or a bath in very weak (~0.75%) bleach. I like Clorox foaming bath cleaner, which is 2.4% bleach. I add 10 ml of that to 790ml distilled water to prepare a first bath for Texas Chrysotypes that have red/blue/purple staining because of a too damp brush. Works like a charm.

Finally, in what may have been a blessing in disguise, I knocked my HP G4050 scanner off the table Wednesday night. Farewell, awful scanner! It was an ornery machine that loved to scan a beautiful, smooth print by adding grain, white spots, exaggerating micro contrast and turning the creamy skin tones of the Texas Chrysotype process into those of a plane crash burn victim. For the moment, I'm using my cell phone to capture prints. Once I decide that's even worse than the dead scanner, I'll buy a used Epson or Canon off Craigslist... I'll have Electrumtype Kary prints of Kary at the Blanton Museum as soon as I find time to print, wash, and cell photography properly. Learning as you go slows you down a bit...