Kallitype chemicals, developer temperature

[philsweeney]

Using Sandy King's paper on Kallitypes as a guide and Dick Arentz's book on pt/pd printing. Should the sensitizer solutions be mixed at room temperature (70 deg F) or hotter and are there any problems mixing these? What should the temperature of the developer be?

 

[clay]

Are you talking about mixing the ferric oxalate and the metal salt together just prior to coating? If so, room temperature is fine, unless you are trying to use a super saturated metal salt such as potassium chloropalladite or cesium choloropalladite. Both of these metals will need to be warmed to about 100 degrees to completely go into solution. i don't know a lot of people who use either one for precisely that reason. (Although cesium chlorpalladate gives a unique straw golden color to a DOP palladium prints that can be quite arresting and unusual. Double coating is necessary to prevent solarization, however)

If you are talking about mixing the constituent solutions from powder form, then yes, heating the distilled water to about 120 degrees will help get the powdered FO and metal salts into solution.

 

[philsweeney]

Thanks Clay. That answered the question about FO and the silver nitrate. The sodium citrate as a developer is used at what temperature?

 

[clay]

I am not familiar with the sodium citrate used in kallitype. I know that those of us using potassium oxalate for palladium and platinum use it anywhere from room temperature to 160 degrees and higher. The higher the temperature, the warmer the print tone. I don't know if this is advisable with the sodium citrate. I would guess that anywhere from 70-90 degrees F would certainly be a reasonable place to start. Maybe Sandy will chime in with his experience with sodium citrate.....

 

[sanking]

Phil,

As Clay said, the ferric oxalate (20% solution) and metal salt (10% silver nitrate solution for kallitype) can be mixed at room temperature.

I use sodium citrate at room temperature with kallitype. There is really no reason to bother to use it at a higher temperature, as you might want to do with palladium printing to get a warmer tone, because with kallitype the color and warmth of the imge comes from toning, not from development.

BTW, it takes ferric oxalate a long time to go into solution. After you mix it you might want to put the solution (in a tightly closed bottle of course), in a hot water bath at about 130 degree F and give the bottle a shake every fifteen minutes or so. If you just mix it at room temperture and leave it standing around it might take overnight or even longer for the FO to go into solution. Silver nitrate, on the other hand, goes into solution readily.







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