Bleach question - standardizing on one bleach possible?

[Photopathe]

I use Farmer’s reducer (solution A Potassium ferricyanide and Potassium bromide + solution B Sodium thiosulfate) to alter the tones on darkroom prints.

Recently I also started to sometimes use a simple teaspoon of Potassium ferricyanide in a liter of water instead.

I gave a first try to sepia (thiocarbamide) toning, which uses a bleach of Potassium ferricyanide and Potassium Bromide

I am trying next some iron blue toning. For indirect iron toning I have the chemicals to try those two bleach recipe:

Potassium ferricyanide + Ammonia and Potassium ferricyanide + Potassium oxalate (toning solution is ferrous sulfate + hydrochloric acid).

Would be very convenient to be able to use the same bleach for all these processes. Is that possible and if yes, which one to chose?

Thanks!

 

[koraks]

Keeping a fairly concentrated solution of potassium ferricyanide around may be convenient. You can then use that to make whatever the moment calls for.
Everything depends on how much you use of which mix and how often. It's hard to say anything sensible about someone else's darkroom because what you do in there is completely different from what I do. I just optimize for my use - which happens to not involve a lot of ferricyanide at all, at the moment.

In general my experience is that a good balance between efficiency and flexibility is having a couple of stock solutions of common chemicals in a concentration that allows them to be used in all applications.
For instance I currently have 8% ammonium dichromate, 11% silver nitrate, 20% ferric ammonium citrate, 10% citric acid and quite a few more, mostly in pipette bottles for alt. prints. This works well for me because it fits my use cases. Your situation will be totally different.

 

[halfaman]

A Farmer's reducer is not a bleach, it is a Bleach-Fix solution. The other two are real bleaches, one standard rehalogenating bleach and another very specific for an indirect iron blue toning.

You can try a direct blue toning where you need only potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate.

Blue Toning

 

[Photopathe]

Before thiocarbamide toning is it possible to use plain ferricyanide as bleach (instead of potassium ferricyanide+potassium bromide)?

Other way round, is it possible to use the potassium ferricyanide+potassium bromide bleach that was intended for thiocarbamide toning for the indirect iron toning (which is ferrous sulfate + hydrochloric acid)?
I ended up with a fairly large amount of pot ferri+pot bromide bleach...

 

[koraks]

Isn't it part of the fun of having these materials around that you can simply try it out with a couple of scrap prints/test strips? That's what I usually do when facing questions like these.

AFAIK thiocarbamide/thiourea toner requires a rehalogenating bleach, so needs bromide, chloride or iodide to be present. But truth be told I never tried it without!

As to iron toning, I only did direct toning, so can't comment here.

 

[halfaman]

Other way round, is it possible to use the potassium ferricyanide+potassium bromide bleach that was intended for thiocarbamide toning for the indirect iron toning (which is ferrous sulfate + hydrochloric acid)?
I ended up with a fairly large amount of pot ferri+pot bromide bleach...

The idea is that the toning reacts with the bleach to form at the end a blue iron insoluble salt. You need mainly ferricyanide, metallic silver and an iron salt. If you put bromide into the bleach it will "attack" metallic silver to form a bromide silver salt where the toning will probably do nothing afterwards. I am not very confident that it will work but you don't lose anything doing a quick dirty trial.

 

[Doremus Scudder]

You can use the pot. ferricyanide/pot bromide rehalogenating bleach in place of the Farmer's Reducer for print bleaching. It has the advantage of being somewhat reversible if you go too far. As for the iron toners, I'd stay with the published recipes.

Best,

Doremus