Various Metal Salts from Artcraft- Various Usages?

[Phillip P. Dimor]

I figured this would be the best place to post this as I'm quite unfamiliar with a lot of this. I'm interested in trying my hand at either Albumin or Kallitypes and would like to work w/ gum bichromate at some point.
I'm only choosing one process at a time and have previous done a bit of VDB and lots of Cyanotypes. Cost is a major, major factor for me. I've seen that photographer's formulary has a kallitype kit. Apparently it cranks out 30 4x5 prints, which is considerably less than 100 4x5 prints that the VDB kit makes.
I'd love to mix my own and am considering it. I just need a scale (had a mettler, but it is far far away)

I guess my questions would be;
1) Can kallitype's be made rather cheaply? I'd love to platinum tone them, i've read the articles on unblinkingeye. I know it won't be as cheap as VDB, especially with platinum toner.. I really just want the flexibility over VDB. I'd hate to order a kit and make 30 test prints before getting the hang of things.

2) Artcraft lists a lot of Metal Salts- What would one use Silver Oxide, Ruthenium, Rhodium and Irridium for aside from metalurgy? Any photographic uses?

Sorry for the ramble!

 

[Mark Fisher]

There are supprizingly few chemicals needed since you probably aredy have some of it, Sandy's unblinking eye artical is worth looking at. His method is a little different but it does work. THe source of the chemicals I use is artcraftchemicals.com

 

[Jordan]

2) Artcraft lists a lot of Metal Salts- What would one use Silver Oxide, Ruthenium, Rhodium and Irridium for aside from metalurgy? Any photographic uses?

Sorry for the ramble!

I'm just getting through my backlog of posts from this forum, so forgive the delay... silver oxide is used in the argyrotype process, developed by Mike Ware. The other metals are easily reduced platinum-group elements and could conceivably be used in the same way that platinum and palladium are used in alt-processes (either in the Pt/Pd print process or as toners). All three are more costly than Pd by far, not sure how they compare to Pt. (Ir is phenomenally expensive in general.) I don't know what the image tones would be like.