Gold Toning Van Dyke

i have been toning with my Van Dykes with platinum/palladium and have had some nice results, I would like to increase dmax a bit and have heard positive comments on Gold toning which i would like to try. Have initially been looking at Tetenal gold toner, anyone tried this? Loris I believe you have quite some experience with gold toning, would be interesting to hear what formula your using at the moment. I need quite a lot of it for a one shot solution, i think around +300ml for 32x27 inch print, so i need to find the most economical way. I took your advice on double coating with VD and it helps quite a bit!

Hi Dave,
I'm thinking about the same thing. Sandy King has an article on this process, but I don't think it's out yet. Here are some threads and articles I came up with. The last one has good details in it from Loris and others.
Best, Ben

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Davec said:

i have been toning with my Van Dykes with platinum/palladium and have had some nice results, I would like to increase dmax a bit and have heard positive comments on Gold toning which i would like to try. Have initially been looking at Tetenal gold toner, anyone tried this? Loris I believe you have quite some experience with gold toning, would be interesting to hear what formula your using at the moment. I need quite a lot of it for a one shot solution, i think around +300ml for 32x27 inch print, so i need to find the most economical way. I took your advice on double coating with VD and it helps quite a bit!

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You should probably also read Wynn White's articles on the Unblinking Eye and The Alternative Process website if you haven't done so. Wynn's article has formula for gold toner.

Also I would recommend considering the Agyrotype process. See Dr. Ware's website for a discussion about the process. There are quite a few gold toning solutions that you can use for toning VDB or Agyrotypes. They will almost always shorten the tonal scale as well as produce a unique tonal color so if you are using digital negatives you will probably want to calibrate based on the application of toner. IMO, you are much better off mixing your own gold toners than using the Tetenal products which I think are way over priced.

Sandy King's article on kalitype's contains some good gold toner formulas. Hopefully Sandy's latest article on VDB will be released soon. I saw several last August and they were really beautiful.

He used Lanaaquerelle <sp?> treated in oxalic acid. Lana has a beautiful white base color. I just received my order last week, for some reason the paper has been out of stock for a while but is a little less expensive than Platine though prices have gone up.

The new Revere paper sounds like a good possible candidate.

Have fun,

Don