You could try toning after fix and wash.
That would be a good thing to test. Although Van Dyke really shouldn't stain this badly when toning is done before fixing, regardless of what toner is used.
The first thing that comes to mind is that perhaps somehow silver sulfide is formed in the toning bath with the carried-over chloropalladate somehow acting as a catalyst. If so, I'd expect that thorough washing after toning and before fixing should solve the issue.
Maybe @fgorge or @nmp could comment on this.
Even if you found a fix, it's better to avoid the stain in the first place if possible.
I would try an alkaline bath between toner and fixing. A bath in 4 g/l sodium carbonate (or bicarbonate) works well with Pt-toner.
Easy to check - add a drop of the toner to a bit of fixer, see what happens.
That print looks a lot better!
Are you adding any alkali to your fixer? If not, maybe that would help keeping any residual Pd-toner inactive during the fixer bath.
If this drop test was with plain hypo, you could repeat it with 0.25% sodium carbonate added to the fixer to see if an alkaline fixer bath makes a difference. (I've used 3% hypo + 0.2% sodium carbonate)
Thanks !
No. I indeed used to add 2 grams of sodium carbonate per liter of hypo fixer, for regular untoned VDB prints. But I remove the sodium carbonate from the fixer formula when toning using gold-thiourea L.P. Clerc formula... Now I think it is needed when fixing a print toned with Palladium, like you say
yes, I'll post my results here by the end of the day...
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?