Slowing or halting the decline of my negatives

Oops. My bad. I'd still try the process on a junk negative to see if it helps improve the printing/scanning.

-M

Sirius Glass said:

Refixing, washing, using PhotoFlo or other surfactant, and hanging to dry may stop further degradation but will not reverse any damage. Unfortunately one can only stop the process, not reverse it.

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+1

I wonder if bleaching and toning the negs in a sulphur toner to completion would work? Or perhaps just rinsing the negs and then give them a silver stabilizer bath?

It might be worth considering scanning the negs, if only as a back-up, before any chemical or physical treatment is attempted on the originals, particularly as they are of such personal value to you.

The process of silver mirroring is accelerated by moisture so I am not sure if rinsing or washing the negatives or prints is a good idea, it might aggravate the problem?

The silver mirroring consists of silver sulfide, a very stable compound. AFAIK there is no way to remove it with common photo chemistry, only with mechanical means (abrasion).

Direct toning would make sense, as it would turn any image forming silver in the print into stable silver sulfide, which should prevent it from being oxidized and migrating through the emulsion. So, while not being able to remove the silver mirroring in the affected areas, it could at least in theory stop the print from deteriorating further. However, the question is how this would affect any already oxidized silver (the part of the silver that is already in the process of migration through the emulsion and is no longer part of the image information). If these silver ions are turned into silver sulfide too, this could aggravate the mirroring problem. Not sure if fixing before toning could be of any help to remove exactly that unwanted part of silver in the emulsion.