Over the last year I have developed a mercury pot design to be available commercially and images of it can be seen in the updated gallery for mercury pots by CasedImage.com.
It took 4 prototypes and a lot of effort to get on top of the issues of electrical heat engineering and the thermodynamics of a large steel pot with a small amount of mercury in it. It did jump in at the deep end in designing it to take a maximum format of 8×10 inches, but I wanted a piece of professional equipment that would sustain some of the large of amount of investment required. It allows space for two half plates to be developed at the same time as well as catering for whole plate, which was my own personal preference also. It has a electrical heating system that has a digital controller which uses logarithms to manage a stable temperature. Despite this, another main feature that I sort in the design is that it has a telescoping stand (while keeping the overall footprint very compact) for use with heating by alcohol lamp. Most would use the electrical heating option but I wanted the pot to be able to be used in those rare occasions, in the outdoors/where there is no electrical supply. For those occasions it has a battery powered temperature display, which uses the same temperate sensor as the electrical heat system. It has a double darklside/airlock entry to the interior, made of stainless steel stopped slides and cnc machined Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMWPE). It also has clear acrylic walls to impede the airflow in a fume hood from cooling the heat elements and making their task more difficult.

The first contemporary daguerreotypes website from China can now be seen at lijunyi.com. Li sent us 4 scans of his 18x24cm (approx 8×10″) work which has been added to his gallery.

A artist gallery for a French/Spanish collective of artists has been added to the site. They have been making well executed 8×10 inch becquerel daguerreotypes that show there is power in numbers;
“We are french photographers and also profesor of photography in Paris during 15 years ( Helene teached photography in several schools in Paris : Speos, Les Gobelins and Le Cube).
We came to dag because one day we asked ourselves :”Can we make dags nowadays?” It was in 2009 and fortunally we found the Bry Sur Marne Exhibition where we met Marc Kereun and participed to his workshop. We began first with Mercury but in a flat it is not safe, so we begin to practice Becquerel. We posted in your forum and Bailun contacted us directly and gave us some good tricks for bdag. Now we live and work in Spain.
Simone Choulle ( for Helene Vedrenne and Nina Zaragoza)”