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That is quite ambitious as a starting point. You have to look to the 19th century when daguerreotypy started out and not assume they didn’t know wha they were doing because it was the 19th century. Silver chloride on a silver plate won’t cut it. On eBay you could find some iodine (resublimed will do) for not much and that will give you something to work with. One of the first learning curves is knowing the difference between good polish (say on silver cutlery) and daguerrian polish that will garner enough of a reaction with iodine to form the appropriate amount of silver iodide for becquerel development. The exposures will be long and you may need more than one coin to get to the stage of getting images – lots of polishing. I do like the coin idea though, I have a silver quarter from 1936 that an old daguerreian friend told me I should use to galvanise a dag plate with. One day in remembrance of him.

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Hello Bailun
You are correct in observing we have not had anther IO event since 2013. It was a huge undertaking and such things come at great cost (personally it cost me in excess of US$3000 in make it happen),sadly a call for donations to cover the costs went unheeded which makes putting on the next event a daunting prospect. Having said that we will endeavour to repeat its success and I take it, given your expectations, I can count on your support.

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Thats interesting about the sputtering, a good reason to filter.

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Hi Titisteph

With the white dots – how stable is your mercury pot? – does it move or bounce around when you are operating it? If so you may be causing the mercury to slop around inside. When mercury moves in a container it will throw very small droplets up into the air. If they hit the plate they bond with the silver and cause white spots like this and can be difficult to remove.

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Hi Yoko

My experience with becquerel dags is that they go cream, yellow or green with overexposure, rather than blue. I think you will find with a higher degree of polish you will get more detail. It is a good result for a first dag plate, keep on trying.

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Can you add an image here of the plate sitting in your hand or a video of it in your hand – it is difficult to tell from these images what the object is we are looking at.
What do you mean by “digital daguerreotype” in your documentation?

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Can you explain what it is we are looking at – is this an image on a metal plate with a polished silver surface?

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Looking great Ty!

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I’ve used the Nushine II S for many years on mike’s clad plates and never had any problems with staining even on extant daguerreotypes after many years. Never heard it happening to others either.

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Can you add pictures of your mercury pot?

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Pruts, can you give us some more info to help with the problem solving
– what dags have you made before -becquerel?
– can you describe the steps in your polishing technique?
– what colour are you aiming for with the Iodine?
– How are you determining the bromine exposure?

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Bing’s email program and assigned me as spam! All good now.

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I am working on one for Takashi Arai at the moment, will post pictures on cdags when done. I’ve only made some slight cosmetic changes since the photo’s previously posted here – have replaced the brass trim with stainless steel. The one I use for myself is like the final design, but it is slightly smaller pot than 8×10, being the first prototype I later updated. The controller box for it and its fittings are a bit different, I used up parts from the testing and design phase. For the final design of the controller box see the photo’s already posted here above.

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Hi Marc

The two heat elements are very powerful to mimic the sudden burst of heat you get from using the flame of a alcohol lamp. When in use the digital controller turns the elements on and off with pauses in-between, slowly and stably bringing the temperature to set point (about 15 mins). I have used the set point of 90 degrees celsius no problem but I don’t know how high you could go, certainly over 100 degrees or even 110 degrees celsius, but I have not tried this. Such super heating of the mercury, I imagine, would be detrimental to making good daguerreotype plates but I can’t see it would pose any more undue safety risk – its a very robust pot with a good seal around the double dark slides. The area between the plate surface and the face of the adjacent dark slide is about 1/8th of an inch, so that amount of air is released from the pot with the operation of the dark slides to remove the plate. Even with such a fine pot it should always be used within a fume hood or outdoors with adequate ventilation.

best

Alan.

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I designed a becq. developing frame that lets the back of the plate be exposed for cooling – http://www.cdags.org/becquerel/

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Back in 2001 Jerry took a triptych of me using that monster lighting set up. When the it fired I felt it on my skin like a quick breeze and there was the faint smell of burning hair. At this years IO symposium Mike Robinson mentioned these side effects could be avoided by placing a large blue filters/glass in between the flash and sitter with no change to exposure. Something worth trying in my experience. The whole plates of Jerry’s great work can be seen here;
http://www.jerryspagnoli.com/Portraits/alanbekhuis.html

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Glad it went well. The quick disconnects on the final design make it much easier to unhook the pyramid from the stand and the heating system for pouring the mercury out. As your email mentioned you found, a 30ml syringe though for removing the mercury works just as well.
All mercury pots should be kept in a larger sealed container as they have mercury contaminated surfaces. I keep my pot in a food chiller bin for its seal. Stored this way its as good container for keeping the mercury so no need to remove it except for filtering.

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Yes but I pour it into a HDPE container that is 6cm tall but only 17mm wide, it contains the splashing, I’ve never lost a speck. I’ve always filtered the mercury through a paper funnel fairly regular, so am use to doing it.

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Some more images

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Hi John, I have always just poured my mercury out of the inverted pyramid and with this pot I have done it. With the pyramid lifting away from the heavier stand, it pours out in a straight line. But for safest handling I am endorsing using a syringe as the extraction and storage medium. An idea suggested by Andy Stockton is to have a square cap magnetic flanges that can be placed in the pot to secure the mercury in in situ and I shall look into this, as both your takes on this make sense. Inside the pot I don’t want any ridges of thread that might disrupt the condensation flow back down into the reservoir. Glad you like the work.

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Hi Bailun

Here is a image of the inside of the pot before painted black inside (easier to show/photograph). Inside there is just the temperature probe cylinder which is sealed — its not open at the end inside the pot, so no mercury can come out of it. To remove the mercury from the pot a syringe is used, easy, no spill. I have followed the 19th century example of a mercury pot, I think the removable mercury cup is not safe, having a threaded opening next to the mercury.
The largest opening is 8×10, format reduction frames (sold separately) can be inserted to give whatever smaller format you use.
Will go take some more photos and post them here.
best
Alan

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Further to the post above about my pots I thought I’d share some final pics of the two pots I sent out today to clients. They differ from the pic posted earlier due to improvements and also from the final design I have settled on (sill start a new thread her in the dagforum for them).
These units for 110 and 220 mains voltage – they have the same parts but the elements are wired in series for 220v and in parallel for 110v, the controller having a wide band of input voltage.
With these I added insulation to the underside of the pots and clear acrylic walls to stop the cold air of the fume hood cooling the steel surface.
Cat for scale

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Hi Jason
Yes I currently have CAP’s pot back with me to have the static stand replaced by the new design plus some other refinements since I sold them it back in March. What you will be using in November will be the final design so all who pass through CAP’s doors can see the design in person, effectively being my agent in NYC.
Once I have some product photography on the new design I will start a new thread, my apologies too Pollywog.

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Hi Pete, I don’t have a temperature probe specifically designed to read surface temperatures, so may not be able to answer that. The tube that goes into the pot, for the temp probe to go into, has a 1mm thick wall, the pot itself is made of 2mm stainless steel. I would think that a probe just strapped to the outside of the pot will be effected by the outside environment of the pot and given its for working in a fume hood, it may effect the reading.

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Hi Jason
Same as my current pot, I remove the darkslide assembly and just pour it out into my mercury container. I’ve done this since 2008 with my other pot for filtering the mercury and never found it a problem, in fact I’ve always wondered why other designs bother with a removable mercury cup. Tipping the inverted pyramid slowly the mercury flows the joint of two sides of the pot and into the small PTFE container I use to store the mercury.

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