[jdanforth]

Well SHIT, you learn something new everyday! After I wrote that post I kept mulling over the issue in my head. I hadn’t really thought about it thoroughly before but it makes sense to me that UV would fog the image. I don’t know why IR or visible red works but you’re certainly right about the UV thing. I’m such a putz.

[jdanforth]

Cool! Great job!

I did this while learning the ropes with Jerry Spagnoli a few years ago. I’ve made a lot better AND a lot worse since then. I’ll have to check my notes on the exposure.

[jdanforth]

AgNO3 wrote: I’ve tried to keep all my equipment having a vintage look to it and since one of my other hobbies is collecting antique electrical devices I took one of my old 1920’s GE motors and rigged up an old looking setup.

This fills me with delight. We’re a strange bunch of people. Do you dress the part too? http://www.gentlemansemporium.com This might be fun too: http://www.rejuvenation.com Very steampunk.

[jdanforth]

drdag wrote: My hair has still alll fallen out tho’. Mind you it did that before i starting Dags!

When your teeth start to fall out it’s time to worry.

[jdanforth]

Race wrote:Wow… I just got my plates today in the mail. I spent $400 and my plates look as if a five year old silvered them Not only do they have deep scratches but silver dust clumps all over the place. What a mediocre plating company

Oh no! Sorry to hear that, Race. I would call them up and raise hell.

[jdanforth]

Yeah that was cool. I had quite a few friends e-mail me that day saying "did you know you’re in Wired today?"

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Jon Lewis wrote:I suppose the question would then be: did you know?

Haha, no! They used a lot of my verbiage but never contacted me. I posted an instructable a couple of years ago which netted me quite a deal of Internet 2.0-type attention. I suspect that the instructable was the source of a great deal of the research.

[jdanforth]

botticelli1972 wrote:You might just have to step up to 11 x 14 to fit a true 8×10 plate. I have made my own film holders using the information in the book titled Primitive Photography: a guide to making cameras, lenses and calotypes by Alan Greene. It has plans for all sorts of cameras, lenses and holders. It has a wet plate bent but the ideas are easily modified for dag plates.

Great… just what I need is a BIGGER camera!

[jdanforth]

Sorry to hear that, Race. It sounds to me like they just have a minimum order. I use Surtronics in Raleigh, NC and they’re very fair. I’ve been working with Mike at Surtronics for a year or two now and they’re really getting the hang of what daguerreotype plates should look like.

All that Surtronics does is to silver-plate so you’ll still need to send them polished plates to start with.

edit: I just picked up one 8×10, four 4x5s, and one 3.5×9" and paid about $120 for a half mil.

[jdanforth]

Race wrote:I polish my copper plates with slurry pumice stone using a palm sander ( felt in place of sand paper) for about 1 minute. It gets rid of all the mill marks and should have a matte finish to it. Then I send them to the platers. Does it make a difference if the copper had a mirror finish as opposed to a matte finish?

The silver is so thin that the silvered plates will only be as reflective as the copper beneath them.

The matte plates should still work but I guess the image will lack in contrast. I’ll have to defer to the more experienced guys on that one though.

---

I just dropped off some copper plates with a local copper/brass polishing guy. I thought that I’d give him a shot since I’m so swamped that I don’t have time to polish these plates. The copper guy suggested that I use quality flannel buffing wheels and that I treat the plates from Rembrandt Graphics with white, green, and red. They look pretty sweet but not perfect.

[jdanforth]

botticelli1972 wrote:Most modern dag practitioners seem to polish for overhead lighting i.e. final polishing lines vertical. This would appear to be the best option as most gallery and potential purchaser lighting is ceiling based spot lighting

This is what I do.

[jdanforth]

So I’ve been mulling this over lately. I seal my dags with J-LAR tape which is a gaseous barrier. While very adhesive, I find that the J-LAR doesn’t hold to the glass particularly well.

Alan mentioned that using P-90 and a preserver is appropriate but I can’t easily believe that a preserver really counts as a hermetic enclosure either. P-90 sticks very well to the glass so I wonder if you could do both P-90 and then JLAR on top of it to form a nice vapor barrier.

What do you think?

[jdanforth]

Alan are you going to be able to make it? I’m looking forward to meeting you guys tomorrow night.

[jdanforth]

Andy_Stockton wrote:<snip>
The fact that you can only fully appreciate a daguerreotype in person is simultaneously an asset and a handicap.
<snip>
I have seen one or two videos, but they were rather informally done. Is that a possibility?

You raise some interesting points. I have made a few videos in order to show other people what a daguerreotype is like when viewed in person. Very few people are aware of the mirror quality of dags and it has been useful to show them how the dag will look in person.

Every time I show in a gallery I spend a great deal of time working with the people running it to light the dags correctly. In less than ideal circumstances I’ve even had stacks of 8×10 black mat board available for people to use as reflectors. That worked great!

A video would be an interesting way to show the dag in the case. I browse online for sculpture quite a bit and I find it frustrating that the sculptures are only shown from one angle. Sculpture, like dags, is better experienced than simply shown. I think that a video setup with the dag on a turntable would be nice. You could freeze-frame the video when the lighting is ideal for the image and then resume it after a few seconds. Fancy!

J

[jdanforth]

Andy_Stockton wrote:Thanks for posting this resource. Cheaper and better. I like the sound of that. I noticed in your own blog site you mention using a local plating company. I don’t see many mentions by contemporary daguerreotypists to doing their own plating. Caswells has home plating supplies. Any thoughts on the value or problems with home silver plating?

Caswell has a dip plating kit for about $700-800 that would work. I decided that doing my own electroplating was entirely beyond the realm of sanity. I’ll leave it to the experts.

[jdanforth]

drdag wrote:Oh yes , circular dags , been putting them in my carbon fibre boxes for years…Only joking!

One-upping me again! Sheesh! I’m coming to your show. Which night will you be there? The 9th?

[jdanforth]

I learned that polishing block trick from Jerry Spagnoli. The plate holder is a small piece of wood glued to another piece of wood that is slightly larger than the plate size. I have one for 4×5 and smaller; one for whole plate and smaller; and one for 8×10 and smaller.

It strikes me now that screwing a cabinet handle (the D-shaped kind) to the bottom could prove to be a whole lot more controllable.

I just nail the plate down with little tacks to hold it in place. It works pretty well.

[jdanforth]

Another vote for Epson scanners. I have an older scanner and it seems to be OK. Most scanners have a manual focus provision in them.

By the way, ICE is actually a quickie scan made with an infrared light that illuminates dust. The computer then calculates and removes the dust particles. Pretty cool.

[jdanforth]

Cool, thanks Jon. I’ll knock together a CAD file and see what I can figure out. I have 12 dags and 12 cases to make in the next 12 days so I’m a bit busy!

[jdanforth]

I forgot to ask if you’d be willing to share your sketchup / CAD files with us. Would you mind? I might just knock together an open source design for a fuming box and cut one out on the CNC.

[jdanforth]

First, the fuming box is a beauty, Jon! Well done! I think that I’ll experiment with making a similar one out of HDPE, UHMW Plastic, or something similar. I wonder if I do that if I even have to have the glass dish at all? Hmmm.

Alan your suggestion about the burning paper is very clever.

Another design idea that I’ve seen is to place a springy bottom below the dish so that the dish naturally wants to push up against the cover.

[jdanforth]

CasedImage.com wrote:I’ve only been using the mercury process for a short while and while I had some disheartening disasters , there’s been good plates as well. Maybe its early days but I can’t imagine doing becquerel again as I need all the learning curve experience I can get with Mercury. Safety is a big concern, I am always checking the air flow meter in the fume hood entrance to make sure I have way more than is recommended. I am very cautious not to even get a whiff of the bromine or Iodine. Mercury is a worry – colorless, ordourless, absorbed through the skin, there’s genetic susceptibility to mercury poisoning and its cumulative that never goes away. Properly managed though it is just another hurdle in the long list of challenges in making the Daguerreotype.

Do you have pics of your fume hood setup? I’d like to see it. How much CFM do you use?

[jdanforth]

Jon Lewis wrote:(perhaps even up to 16×20! )

I just accepted a commission for an 11.5" x 11.5". It’s going to be fun on a bun!

[jdanforth]

I figured out what was happening last night. The wheels were just too old and had become saturated with metal particles despite my frequent raking. I have now changed my process. I’m using tripoli on a (clean!) stitched denim wheel followed by white on an unstitched muslin wheel followed finally by blue on another unstitched muslin wheel.

White is described by the manufacturer as "This compound will cut lightly, bringing most harder metals to a brilliant shine. Designed for polishing chrome and nickel plate, stainless steel and ordinary steels." I use it because it was strongly suggested as a post-tripoli cut and color step for copper. It works great!

So, in conclusion, make sure that your wheels are clean!!!!

[jdanforth]

This is a really great topic. Thanks for starting it.

I use the Pyrex 11-cup dish for my boxes although I need to upgrade to something larger since I’m doing 8×10" plates now.

The simplest design is to just slide the plate over the iodine using the top of the dish as the guide rail. Easy! The height is just fine and it only takes a while to sensitize when it’s cold in the winter.

Your design is elegant and will work well. My older boxes don’t use a lid; instead they use a two-slide system. There are two solid slides that go over the tray when the box is not in use. One is wood; the other is Lexan. When in use I remove the wooden slide, tilt up the Lexan slide, and insert the plate carrier. Though it’s inelegant this process maintains a reasonably good seal over the tray.

Now… the million dollar question. I’ve been working on a box off and on for a few months now. The long sides are walnut and the short sides are white ash. The box is joined with dovetails and I’m thinking about engraving Louis Daguerre’s portrait on the lid. There is going to be a ring of inlaid amboyna burl at the level of the slide carrier. Nice, eh?

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