Gold Toner

[Bill Banks]

I want to try gold toner for the first time and to keep it simple I shall start with something ready made. Here in the UK Silverprint sells Tetenal for £30.46 a litre or Fotospeed for £43.67 a litre. Does anyone know if these are more or less the same or whether there a good reason to buy the more expensive product? In case this matters my paper of choice is Ilford MGFB Warmtone.

Many thanks

Bill

 

[RalphLambrecht]

gold toners contain gold chloride at 1$/g a fairly expensive chemicaloncheck the ingredients list one may contain more gold chloride than the other an d therefore presumably lasting longer

 

[Mark Fisher]

Ralph, gold choloide is about $40-45/g right now. The good news is that makes a lot of toner. If you choose to make your own, try Clerc's Gold toner. It keeps well, seems to go a long way and has nice tones.

The only way to know which is the better deal is to know how much gold they use. I used the Fotospeed once and it worked pretty much the same way as the Clerc's. I suspect either one is fine. Personally, I make up batches of 250ml at a time and use as little toner as possible in a flat bottom tray then save it in a separate bottle labeled "used gold toner". It seems to last longer that way.

 

[Martin Aislabie]

Fotospeed and Tetenal Gold Toners used to be a very similar price (within a few pence of each other)

If there is a price difference it will be because of old stock v new stock prices.

As others have commented in this thread, Gold is v expensive and has gone up a huge amount over the last couple of years.

Personally, I could not tell the differences between the two products but Tim Rudman thought there were subtle differences between them - and Tim knows a heck of a lot more about Toning than I do

Care is needed when using Gold Toner - I could only get about 10 sheets out of 16x12 through 1L of Toner - it gets expensive

Martin

 

[eddie]

I've only used Fotospeed but, like Martin, find it doesn't last too long. It can be extended by heating (NOT in a microwave) but at the price it is now, it's certainly no bargain. Too bad, because I love the results I get from a sepia into gold toning regimen. The peachy tones I get, especially in the sky, are very appealing.