It’s been a while since I made any new work and this month I finally began the preparations to do that. I ordered new chemistry, made some new equipment, ordered some new toys, and fixed up some old stuff. It feels so good to finally be focusing back on making images again, I can’t wait to get started.
First up is the collodion, I ordered fresh collodion, salts, ether and alcohol from Artcraft Chemicals, those were must have’s. Then I picked up some other accessories, a lab stand for my filters, a new digital PH meter, and a bunch of beautiful, clean new glass bottles.
A fresh batch of Coffer’s Old Reliable..
I am a graduate of Camp Tintype, John Coffer’s farm workshop in 2013. This really is a process that must be taught, you can attempt to learn on your own, there is a wealth of information out there but nothing beats a good teacher. I guess its like how photographers are either Nikon or Canon or whatever, loyal to the team. All I know is I learned it this way from John, and I like the results. There are a ton of other people out there now teaching workshops and giving advice, I have manuals from a few of them and I watch others on YouTube but I use what I learned on John’s farm as my baseline.
The silver bath I have been using has been my primary bath for a while now, and I maintain it pretty well. It gets filtered going into and coming out of the tank, and gets periodically sunned after big events, topping it off with a fresh 9% solution as needed. Today I filtered several times and mixed up a fresh 9% solution. The new tank I made is thinner and requires less solution.
I also re made the silver bath tank box that I use to sensitize my plates. This is an experiment and we will see if it suits my needs or not soon. I made it differently from the one I have used since the beginning. The old one was wider, and held approximately 1500 ml of solution. The new one is made from thinner plexiglass, and holds 1000 ml. It also sits at an angle supported by a wooden stand in the front, the old one dropped through the floor of my dark box and was very low profile. The problem with that design though is that the tank was absolutely vertical. This never caused any real problem as long as you knew how to handle the dipper when you remove the plate so you don’t scratch it.
Nothing fancy, but it should get the job done.
We’ll see soon if this will work, I am so used to my old bath being recessed into the bottom of my box, I will have to adjust to it being higher, otherwise I.will cut the hole back into my dark box and use the old tank, but maybe keep the new thinner plexi inner tank to still save of solution.
