My First Dags! Day One.

[Festus]

Yesterday, after about a year of building/collecting equipment and supplies, I bit the bullet and attempted to make my first dag. Polishing the plate was a lot more trouble than I had anticipated. Even with a soft, unstitched wheel it was leaving a lot of scratchs. And the rouge was leaving these hard, red streaks. I was able to get these off with cotton pads,but the scratchs remained. Hand polishing with a rouge rag helped a lot, so decided to continue on. I guess I sensitized the plate okay. Still not sure how you actually check for color? Shine a small flashlight at it? Anyway, I loaded it up in my contact printing frame….along with a digital positive of course. Now how long to expose? I settled on 11 seconds to establish a baseline. Then back into the darkroom and loaded into my wooden plateholder covered with rubylith. Out into the sun it goes for two hours, and……absolutely nothing! But wait! After unloading it and looking at it under the lights, there was a very faint image. Then I realized that I had printed my digi-pos onto pictorico WHITE film instead of transparency film. So will probably need much longer exposure times. Stay tuned for day two!

[Mercury]

Hello Festus (love the handle, how’d you choose it?)

I’m out of my league with B-plates, but we all have to assess color and work on polish.

Even unstitched wheels need a break-in period. I keep a small medical forceps (called a “mosquito”) at hand. It has serrated jaws, and I use it to grab and pull out threads that are protruding from the face of the wheel. Eventually the wheel will quit shedding these long threads so frequently, but it is still a reason for continual observation of the wheel face.

If you’re accumulating hard, red rouge streaks, consider that there might be too much rouge on the wheel. I like to run my rouge wheel as dry as I can to still get an adequate polish. A really dry wheel will yield a coarse buff, but too much on the wheel will drive a red rouge stain into the plate causing problems later. As with so much in this our muse, it’s all subjective. Experience the process, and let the Force (of the plate on the wheel) be with you.

Oh crap. What kind of nonsense is that. Experience will get you there, pure and simple. Go.

Also helpful is an electric skillet that can heat the plate to a bit over 150 degrees F. before wheel buffing. The wheel compounds don’t tend to adhere to a warm plate as much, which helps keep your red rouge scum away.

In my experience, a rigorous course of hand buffing is absolutely necessary to bring wheel-polished plates to the final condition to produce good daguerreotypes.

My opinion, … judge your plate color in good light while sensitizing. I use a 20W 12V halogen desk lamp shining on a clean, white mount board, and I view the plate color in the board’s reflection. When you’ve got that plate color where you want it, then douse the light and give the plate a final few seconds of exposure to iodine and load it into your holder under safelight. Other Becquerel daggers out there, is this the way? This is my practice for Hg daguerreoetypes but I’m out of my zone here.

Festus, as someone new to the process, sometime soon the process may body-slam you pal. Don’t let it get you down. It will be something way out there in the weeds that you’re completely not expecting. It’s the process’s way of saying “do you REALLY want to be a daguerreotypist?” If you’re like me when it first happened, you’ll be completely bewildered, disillusioned, and depressed. DO NOT give in. In the Great Irving Pobboravsky’s words “consult your process.” You’ll come out knowing SO much more. This will happen again and again and again. Happened to me yet again this year, a contaminated $2 spritz bottle. Go figure.

Sorry for the camp philosophy, but I’ll cast this to the Blog and take what comes.

[Festus]

Mr Nelson. You said some key things that I think will help me a lot. Break in the buff, heat the plate, and not too much rouge. I’ll be giving it a whirl in the morning. Thankyou.

BTW, didn’t we all love Festus from Gunsmoke back in the 50’s and 60’s?

[Mercury]

“…giving it a whirl…”? A man after my own heart, and we all know puns come from the heart?

Please, ‘Mercury’ if not Ken. But thank you.

Leapin’ Miss Kitty, I’ve got it now!

One more thing: These are things that work for me. If you try them and they don’t work for you, keep searching. We’re all making daguerreotypes, but I’ve never met a group of people out to pet the same cat (I can’t say “skin” since I’m owned by cats) that have come up with so many original ways of doing it.

[jdanforth]

Quote:

then douse the light and give the plate a final few seconds of exposure to iodine and load it into your holder under safelight. Other Becquerel daggers out there, is this the way?

That’s what I do.

[Author]

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