Borax purity grade

Photo Engineer

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Maybe it should be plated in silicon (silly con) because we are in the digital age.

Basically, what we apparently have is a guy who failed chemistry trying to teach some experienced chemists right from wrong regarding chemistry and lab technique. I'm as interested in this thread as you guys. But, for different reasons. I sincerely believe in leaving a legacy in which people know how to do things right, but at the same time can have fun in the darkroom.

From a practical and personal standpoint, the formulas that I developed (pun unintended) while at Kodak have sold in the millions of dollars world wide. This is from guesstimates over the lifetimes of the several products. But on the other side of the coin, I still restrict myself to paper airplanes. In other words, age has given me the wisdom to avoid comments in fields which are outside my field of expertise.

I continue to develop products which are apparently selling well considering todays markets. I am working with my good friend Bill Troop and others to perfect several new products to improve fixing, washing and developer life (usability). I am also helping the Formulary set up a line of emulsion making equipment and chemicals. I want to leave a quality legacy for analog photographers no matter what happens to the major companies.

So, in a way, I have a vested interest in giving the 'right' answers here and everywhere I post, but you are certainly and obviously free to do whatever you want. And, BTW, some people send me notes in which they express the fear of contacting me. They think it is a bother to me. I welcome any and all questions and will answer and do research as far as my time will permit. Also, BTW, I am not always right, but if I err, you will see my apology and correction posted on APUG.

PE
 

MattKing

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Ron and Gadget:

Thank you for both sharing what you share, and caring so much about what you know.

For what it's worth, I think you are both right.

Ron, because the strict standards you refer to are important to understand.

Gadget (I don't think I know your actual first name), because for those of us who understand the advantages and disadvantages of replacing the technically correct, with the more easily obtainable, your approach makes wonderful sense.

As Ron has been known to say, "Use whatever works for you". I think that is what Gadget is saying.

It is just (as Ron is currently saying) be sure you have an appreciation for the risks.

Matt
 

gainer

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You just used the argument from authority. What do chemists have to say about photography that is so authoritative? So far as I have seen, no chemical tests have been cited to show that there is a difference between technical grade of 20 Mule Team brand and Kodak's photographic grade of years ago, or even of today. If there is a difference, it is not likely to be in the percentage of borax decahydrate, but in the other ingredients that total less than 1% in both cases. It is not likely to be in abrasiveness, because 20 Mule Team borax is claimed to be non abrasive. It is not likely to be in chlorine or phosphate, at least not in Kodak's favor, because these are definitely stated to be not present in the mule crap. (I got tired of spelling it out.)
I'll bet that if you chemists decided to produce a photo grade of borax from the raw material, you would follow exactly the procedure used by the makers of the mule crap. I'll further bet that you will not call that bet because you don't know their procedure and dare not find out what it is. If this doesn't get you to check your ASS-U-MEd facts, nothing will.
 

gainer

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I'm not trying to teach you anything about chemistry. I'm trying to get you to use what you know in a logical manner, not just authoritatively. You can quote your education and work experience all you want, but if you cannot back up your statements with numbers, you won't convince an engineer.

Don't make too much of that failure. I could have repeated those two courses. I had a 3+ average in all my other course work, including Chemical Engineering lab, inorganic qualitative and quantitative analysis, welding, machine shop, etc. I passed English by exam. I had to in order to live with my father, a Professor of English at WVU. I did not change to Aeronautical because it was easier.
 

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Chemical grades

There are many grades of chemicals that are not obvious to someone not familiar with chemistry. I list a few below.

1. Cosmetic grade - usable on human skin, can contain lots of things that do not affect humans such as halides. Not good for photography.

2. USP (US Pharmacopia) which is a grade which excludes chemicals harmful to human metabolism or otherwise untoward effects.

3. Practical - usable in most practical applications.

4. Photographic - usable with no impurities that affect photographic processing or emulsion making.

5. Analytical - so pure that nothing interferes with use in analytical procedures.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Each has an ISO standard so that individual companies or chemical compositions can be ISO certified.

Any person not a chemist would be oblivious to this all.

In photography there are 3 situations from my POV.

1. Do not care and having fun.

2. Economy and maybe don't care.

3. Highest quality.

Determining your position in these two matrices is essential to getting what YOU want in your pictures. I have said "Use what works for you" but after more than 30 years in the business, I find that variability in the end result increases from 3 > 1 in the above matrix and that photograde and higher is best. Sorry! I've done the tests. It is a 'fact' to me.

So, having a person suggest something to me says to me that he had better be an expert in the entire system and should have quantitative results. This is generally not the case. It is expressed as an 'opinion' by a self proclaimed 'expert' and I am, as I have said before, becoming less and less tolerant of these self proclaimed experts.

So sorry to interject this into what has been a 'fun' thread, but it is now on the verge of diverting good people from fact.

PE
 

Photo Engineer

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Ummm, what did you do? At this point I have not quoted my education or achievements. FYI:

I have:

1. Gotten a graduate degree in chemistry
2. Been in intelligence in SEA and hold a retired officers rank.
3. Been Still Photo Director at Cape Canaveral
4. Been Asst. MoPic and Metric Photo Officer at Cape Canaveral
5. Been part of the development team for Ektacolor 37 and 30 paper
6. Designer of the current Kodak Blix.
7. Codesinger of the EP2/3 developer
8. A member of the Gold 400 team
9. A member of the Ektaflex team
10. A member of 3 products that were not released including one based on Cuprous oxide and a thermal dye bleach system with Grant Haist.
11. A member of the emulsion modeling and scaling team.
12. A holder of 15 patents and 6 Research disclosures on photo products.
13. Last but not least... Kodak has publised a CTO newsletter article about my emulsion work, and I have been teaching workshops in emulsion making and coating.

I think that this defines my use of logic and education Patirck. You see, I can put up my CV too. I have been devoting my retirement to QUALITY photo education in terms of chemistry and lab techniques.

PE
 

mark

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My CV can beat up your CV with the punctuation tied behind its back.

no it can't

yes it can, and on Sunday too. nah nah nah.

Come on guys this got silly several pages ago.
 

Kirk Keyes

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Anscojohn said:
Why don't youze guys put this discussion in the can and go out and make some photographs?
Click to expand...

Is this the APUG version of Godwin's Law? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

This seems to happen every time that a few people are debating some technical detail that is deemed too esoteric for some other disinterested parties to bother with.

Well, I hereby declare "Keyes' APUG Corollary":
As an APUG discussion grows longer, the probability of someone saying, "Why don't you guys go out and make some photographs?" approaches one.
 

gainer

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It is indeed silly. I cannot get an answer to the question "What makes using 20 Mule Team Borax in photographic solutions a risky business." It ought to be straightforward, lke "It contains such and such." What I get is that although it may have the same percentage of the borax decahydrate as analytical reagent grade, it may not be good for some unknown but possible reason. Should anyone need an advanced degree in chemistry to understand a straight answer to that question? Is it possible for less than 1% of a substance to have something other than chlorine, phosphates or abrasiveness that might suddenly jump out and bite my emulsion, and not to know the probability of that substance being in a product that is produced at a rate greater than 100,000,000 tons a year, and with a uniformity great enough that its solubility vs. temperature curve can be published to the 1/100 gram/liter? I doubt that the organic developing agents we use are manufactured to such tolerance, and our measurements with any balance we are likely to afford will weight to such precision and accuracy.

Beyond determining what impurities might affect our developers, there is nothing unique about chemistry that prevents me, whose knowledge of chemistry you have not tested, from questioning the wisdom of paying extra for difficult to obtain chemicals about which we have only someone's word.

Ther is an innate, and I do mean inborn, difference between an engineer and a scientist. You are seeing them clash.
 

gainer

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Yes, but it doesn't explain why you are not using them now. I put mine up because you called me an aeronautical engineer because I got a degree with that title, and in fact I never worked as an aeronautical engineer. I began as an aeronautical research scientist, which I think parallels your work at Kodak. I ended as a human factors "expert". I was an engineer in my approach to problems, and the problems I was assigned to work on were each different, from analysis of wing loads in flight to analysis of supersonic wind tunnel data, to design of star charts, to design of a planetarium projector, to basic human factors studies to design of an oculometer for determining in real time a pilot's lookpoint. I mentioned one of two photographic tasks I was assigned.

I still do not see why one of our chemists cannot define the differences that make the analytical reagent better than the mule crap for use in black and white developers.
 

Kirk Keyes

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gainer said:
You can quote your education and work experience all you want, but if you cannot back up your statements with numbers, you won't convince an engineer.
Click to expand...

Patrick, I'm not going to quote my education and work experience as it will not convince you of anything. Your acheivements are much greater that I'll ever hope to reach. Ron, your's are too.

But Pat, let's talk engineering. Say I'm building a rocket to put a satellite into a particular orbit. My design criteria is to be able to reach orbit without blowing up. Well, at the least only one catastrophic failure out of every 100 launches.

So we need to use some steel in the framework of the structure. The specification that the design engineer came up with specified a Ni-Al-Ti superalloy. Well, some other engineer down the line figures that we can get by with SAE 4340 steel. He figures we don't need all that high temperature strength and makes a materials substitution. We just don't need that much performance, he thinks to himself.

Well, that material substitution works. Well, most of the time. We have a failure rate of 5 catastrophic failures out of every 100 launches.

Was this good engineering? Was it worth the risk?

And what if the rocket had met our 1 failure out of 100, but the rocket was not able to reach as high of orbit as we wanted? It made it to orbit, it did not blow up more than expected, but it just did not give us the performance we needed. The satellite could not get into the proper orbit.

And what if we did not have the tools to measure that lack of performance. Is it still good engineering?

These are the kind of questions involved in this debate, as I see it. Especially the last question I've posed here.
 

Kirk Keyes

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gainer said:
I still do not see why one of our chemists cannot define the differences that make the analytical reagent better than the mule crap for use in black and white developers.
Click to expand...

It's simple. I don't know the details of Technical Grade vs. Photographic Grade vs. ACS Reagent Grade. How can you expect me to state that all three are suitable for the task at hand without knowing the specifications of each? Isn't that a large part of engineering? Understanding and meeting specifications?
 

Photo Engineer

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I think that to further Kirk's statement, we 'know' that the ANSI standard specifies certain limits of impurities for a chemical to meet the definition of Photo Grade. We also might suspect that Analytical Grade is purer than Photo Grade, but this is not always the case. Certain impurities can disqualifiy an Analytical Grade material from being used as a Photo Grade material. I have personally seen this happen.

So, we need the information, but even the URL I quoted above does not give details, just hints.

Kirk gave a very good analogy above in post #89. I think it works well for me.

I have laid out some useful guidelines in post #81 above. And, I apologize for post #82.

PE
 

gainer

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Surely there must exist an assay of the mule crap that goes beyond "greater than 99% borax decahydrate with no chlorine or phosphates." I haven't found it. Meanwhile, I see Silvergrain accepts mule crap for photo use.

The only complaint about Kirk's analogy is that such decisions usually come from above, against the advice of the engineers. Imagine you were doing your present research for a large manufacturer, whose accounting department decided that the grade of borax you specified as being essential to proper performance of your design was too expensive. They substitute borax from the lowest bidder without regard for tech specs. Perhaps that is what you ARE imagining. That is not what I am doing. The developer formulas that I make for my own use and publish for others, when they involve borax, were tested with mule crap. For all I know, they would not work with any other brand or grade. I seriously doubt that to be the case, but we're talking possibilities, not probabilities. So we can have a truce of sorts. We will specify the source of the chemicals that we use for any published experiments and their grade where available, and a disclaimer that proclaims (is that a contradiction in terms?) that we have no control over what may happen if other sources and/or grades are used.
 

Michel Hardy-Vallée

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gainer said:
Meanwhile, I see Silvergrain accepts mule crap for photo use.
Click to expand...

So many meanings packed in that little sentence... :rolleyes:
 

gainer

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mhv said:
So many meanings packed in that little sentence... :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Yeah. Wasn't thinking of all of them. I hope Riuji is at least grinning at my abbreviation of 20 Mule Team Borax.
 

Kirk Keyes

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I agree - this should be standard practice, especially when non-photographic grades are being used.
 

DarkroomExperimente

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"Meanwhile, I see Silvergrain accepts mule crap for photo use..."

reminds me of the story of how phosphorus was first extracted from urine...I can't find the book, but there were a few hilarious passages describing the history of it...barrels of urine were delivered to the lab...one secretive experimenter would only disclose that he was getting the phosphorus from something that came out of the body -- and some poor guy guessed wrong and used huge amounts of the wrong substance for his experiments


I think this was the book:

"The Last Sorcerers: The Path from Alchemy to the Periodic Table"
By Richard Morris

Dead Link Removed

( very interesting book )
 
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Michel Hardy-Vallée

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DarkroomExperimente said:
"Meanwhile, I see Silvergrain accepts mule crap for photo use..."

reminds me of the story of how phosphorus was first extracted from urine...
Click to expand...


There's that famous painting by Joseph Wright of Derby that is often used to illustrate that point:


That alchemist probably distilled urine and found a light like that of a compact fluorescent tube... I knew those were POS, but POP? Interesting possibilities...
 

Photo Engineer

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Yes, IIRC rotted urine was distilled from a bed of sand. And, the urine came from horses. I think that the early workers got necrosis of the bone from the phosphorous. That was a work related hazard for the early makers of phosphorous matches.

PE
 

DarkroomExperimente

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I wish I could find my book...IIRC apparently first the chemist got his urine from soldiers, then someone said the miners drank more than the soldiers...so then barrels of urine were delivered from the mines...

one guy's process was 100 times more efficient than the competition...can you imagine learning you were using 100 times more urine than you needed to?

and people say chemistry isn't fun!
 

Ole

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Before indigo was synthesised, an important blue dye was produced from fermented urine. Only human urine seemed to give usable dye, and that from drunkards was best - especially the morning after a heavy binge...
 
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