What changes adding hypo clearing agent to selenium toner?

[BHuij]

I know back in the day that it was common advice to mix selenium toner with hypo clearing agent or other wash aids, though I can't remember why. Seems these days the more common advice is to just mix your toner with water and use it to exhaustion.

I've been doing the latter for several years, any print I'm going to keep goes through KRST mixed 1:9 with plain old tap water. Works great.

Today I did something dumb, and when mixing up my jug of wash aid (I just use sodium sulfite, haven't bought actual hypo clearing agent in a long time), I accidentally dumped it into my selenium toner jug instead of my jug of water. Oops. It still toned my prints as normal. Have I somehow compromised my 1:9 KRST by adding all that sulfite, or should I just continue business as usual until I hit the exhaustion threshold where I would normally toss it and mix up new?

 

[mshchem]

I know back in the day that it was common advice to mix selenium toner with hypo clearing agent or other wash aids, though I can't remember why. Seems these days the more common advice is to just mix your toner with water and use it to exhaustion.

I've been doing the latter for several years, any print I'm going to keep goes through KRST mixed 1:9 with plain old tap water. Works great.

Today I did something dumb, and when mixing up my jug of wash aid (I just use sodium sulfite, haven't bought actual hypo clearing agent in a long time), I accidentally dumped it into my selenium toner jug instead of my jug of water. Oops. It still toned my prints as normal. Have I somehow compromised my 1:9 KRST by adding all that sulfite, or should I just continue business as usual until I hit the exhaustion threshold where I would normally toss it and mix up new?

I formerly used Kodak Hypo Clearing Agent when mixing Se toner. I think I picked up the habit from Kodak and Ansel books in the 80's. It may be best practice, I don't know.
My current procedure is I use "film strength" fixer, fresh with constant agitation for about 90-120 seconds, rinse the print for 15-30 seconds in a tray of fresh water, then straight into the Kodak Rapid Selenium toner 1+3 (1 toner, 3 water), all at 68-75°F. Toning is to my liking but it's fast. Warm tone papers like Fomatone require more dilute toner to have more control of the Toning, but 1+3 works fine. After toning quick rinse then into fresh hypo clear 2-3 minutes with agitation. Then a couple minutes of fresh water gentle wash, then into archival washer.

Personal taste is (currently) using water alone to mix up the toner.

 

[koraks]

Seems these days the more common advice is to just mix your toner with water and use it to exhaustion.

@Doremus Scudder has posted about this many, many times and I recommend at least trying his approach, because it really does work: don't discard your selenium toner. Just replenish it from time to time.

I've never seen the need to mix it with anything other than tap water.

If your KRST works with the sulfite added, I wouldn't worry about it. It wouldn't surprise me if the regular formulation of the KRST concentrate already contains a good amount of sulfite. There's also some ammonium thiosulfate in it and if anything, the sulfite should help to avoid its decomposition.