Hello to everyone, Just new to the forum and to Dags.
I want to do some daguerreotype landscapes for a project of mine. I am starting from scratch and done quite a bit of research. i am going to do B.Dags, no mercury as it scares me a bit.
My firs and most important question: how and where to obtain the copper plates (5×4 and half plate sizes) and how and where to get them silver plated. In the uk. Can anyone help please?
I will do these pictures in Italy though. there I have found a co. that will do the silverplating. However I am a little concerned because when i told them I would need to polish to a mirror, they told me if i polish like that the silver plating will come off.
Does that make sense? Is it just this co. that will plate super thin? I asked them to give me an idea of the thickness but they were not forthcoming. So i wonder if in England there are more people doing dags and therefore more plating companies understanding out needs.
I hope this forum can help me find them.
Second question. I will need to construct a fuming box for the iodine sensitisation. How exact must the tolerances be? How dangerous are the iodine fumes? I understand that one must check the “colour cycles” whci i guess means that during fuming you must take out the plate and look at it, will not a tiny amount of fumes come out in the environment at that stage, how bad for health is this?
Finally, I see in videos that people put the plates on wooden blocks for polishing. Is there a special way of constructing these to that the edges of the plate are not covered by some sort of holting clip? How do you make these blocks?
I know these are real newby questions but we all need to start from scratch at one point. i will appreciate very much any information.
Thank you all.
alex