Orange stains from gold toner

[adelorenzo]

I'm getting some orange stains on my prints with gold toner. I am using the gold chloride + ammonium thiocyanate formula found in the Darkroom Cookbook. (105 g ammonium thiocyanate + 60 ml 1% gold chloride to make 1 L of toner)

I don't believe it's a processing issue as I do make sure my prints are correctly fixed and washed. I've not had any staining issues with other toners including selenium, sulfide, iron blue....

Any suggestions on where to start troubleshooting?

 

[RauschenOderKorn]

I have not had this problem, but I have had the problem of Gold Toner turning first orange, then brownish:

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/tetenal-gold-toner-has-orange-precipitate-exhausted.130443/

I suspect you have a similar problem, just at a different point in your process. There should be some source of free sulphur in your print. This might come from decomposing fixer (precipitating sulphur), exhausted fixer or overfixing.

Some fresh fixer combined with a clean process (A/B fixing), controlled fixing times and maybe some HCA prior to gold toning should do the trick.