Silver plate from spent film fixer or used wet plate dev and rinse?

[Marizu]

I was listening to an interview with Ilford’s Stephen Brierly (www.filmwasters.com podcast) and he mentioned something about reclaiming silver from spent fixer by plating it onto a small sheet of aluminium (aluminum) with a carbon anode on one end.

Would it be correct that there is more silver in my wet plate dregs developer and rinse water?

I wondered whether I could easily use either of these waste products to make plates suitable for daguerreotypy.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or advice.

[greg7mdp]

Hi Marizu, I am sorry but you have it backwards. We sometimes use the daguerreotype process waste products to make wet plates, but the reverse is unthinkable, and even considering it makes me tremble.

Seriously, making dags is difficult enough that I would advise to start with the best plates you can get, and if you can reclaim silver from your used developer, better sell it by the pound and buy some gold chloride for gilding your dags.

gregory

[phuphuphnik]

I use cyanide fixer for my collodion plates, and have been using the spent fixer to plate my dag plates as an experiment. It works fine, but I need to play with the current and voltage to get good results.

[Marizu]

That’s interesting.

I had assumed that there would be more silver in my washed off developer as that is the tray that is more likely to get stained with what I thought was silver.

I use KCN fixer too but I’m somewhat wary about letting off any hydrogen CN whilst plating.

As a complete (non-yet-starting) beginner to dags and to plating, I appreciate that Gregory’s advise is very sound but I am also curious as to what kind of plating kit I would need to use.

Do you have a link to a website so that I can get some kind of idea?

When I look at how much silver nitrate costs me these days, I want to get the most out of it (especially as I’m thinking of making some ULF plates).

Thank you.

[Andy Stockton]

Caswell has a lot of info.

http://www.caswellplating.com

[phuphuphnik]

I can vouch for the Caswell products.

chriso

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