Salt prints: Blue discolouring?

[circumstance]

Arches Aquarelle, soaked in a solution of 2% ammonium chloride and distilled water, with 12% AgNO3 brushed on after drying (AgNO3 solution also contains 6% citric acid). Paper is dried, then contact-printed, everything looks okay, washed with tap water (5-10mins), fixed in 5% sodium thiosulfate (5mins), washed (5mins), hypo-clear (5mins), washed (~10mins).

Somewhere in the wash, part of the print will discolour to blue. I figure it might have something to do with my tap water? Perhaps the chlorine??

Any ideas??

 

[smieglitz]

FWIW I abandoned using Arches for any alternative process print long ago as the sizing did not seem to be consistent. The emulsion would not take evenly and lots of round and ovoid areas of different densities appeared during processing.

I'd suggest you try a different paper. Perhaps Cranes Cover, Cranes Kid Finish or Strathmore 500 plate.

Can you post a scan?

Blochiness is usually the result of uneven drying (and hence sensitivity) before exposure. But it sounds like post-exposure your print did not suffer from that effect but rather turned late in the processing.

 

[reellis67]

I'll second Strathmore Plate. I use it for all my historic process printing now.

- Randy

 

[circumstance]

Here's a low-res scan, you can see the blue-ness at the bottom of the image..

 

[Jim Noel]

I do not have the problem. My processing differs in several aspects from yours, but I believe the main one is that after exposure the print is soaked once again in NaCL solution. This seems to help probably by uniting all of the silver with the Cl radical rather than leaving some with the NO3 radical. This gives me more intense shadows and thus improves the contrast.

 

[circumstance]

Well I'll have to give that a try then!

I've also bought some Strathmore 500 paper, I'll see if that helps.