[Mercury]

Hello Dan,

Thanks for the Plan B offer. Let’s take this off-blog, please email me at

dagman_kn@hotmail.com

Thanks again,

Ken

[Mercury]

Christian,

It looks like you’ve exactly replicated my beloved “Dr. Fuzzy.” When I first built “Dr. Fuzzy” in 1992 the fuzzy-logic PID circuitry was pretty new. I was amazed at how it ‘learned’ the ramp-up for my Hg pot, and would get there in minutes without over-shooting. (I have a fairly thin-walled Hg pot, which has the advantage of being a poor heat-sink, which in turn challenges the PID controller to work harder, more cycles per minute, so to ‘learn’ the process more quickly.)

As was chronicled in CDags, my first 1/4 DIN “Dr. Fuzzy” died suddenly after more than a decade of dedicated service. Expect that. They don’t last forever.

My PID controllers have come from Love Controls, now a subsidiary of Dwyer Instruments. They are great to deal with. I encountered all the customer service questions about Manuals and connections that you did, and Dwyer was very helpful. So, I’m glad you’ve had a good experience with Omega; I’ll be glad to add Dwyer to the CDags list for recommended temperature controller suppliers. (BTW, the Dwyer output contacts are the same as for your Omega controller… contacts 9 and 10, but all the same, make sure of your polarity!)

Ken

[Mercury]

Well, I can’t really call this an ‘argument’ jgmotamedi, (I’m sure we can find something to argue about… we’re talking about making daguerreotypes after all!) but here’s an experiment I’d like to pose for both B-Dag and M-Dag members:

I have noticed, in my own experience, that when a mercury-developed (M-Dag) daguerreotype is dried before gilding, the image is incredibly fragile. A light finger-wipe will nearly erase all trace of the image.

Now… an experiment: After drying the ungilded M-Dag, wipe it with your finger (in a nitrile glove, of course.) My guess is that the damage will be severe. THEN, take that same plate and re-wet it, and then re-dry it as per your usual process. Please tell me if the same finger-wipe test, re-applied, doesn’t tell you that the image is MUCH more durable than it was in resisting the first wipe.

This is a completely subjective test, since you can not gauge your finger pressure precisely for each wipe. But… given all your chances to make everything the same… what do you observe?

Barger and White note that ungilded plates tend to increase in durability over time, and I have found this to be true. What they don’t say is whether image durability can be enhanced quickly by simply re-wetting and re-drying a non-gilded plate.

I can’t say much as to the effects of gold chloride gilding on the image quality of a Becquerel plate, but this test might lend some knowledge to Jason’s question as to whether gilding is really necessary for the Becquerel Process.

Respectfully,

[Mercury]

Eric,

Jeff and I, and many other “old-timers” (sorry guys and gals, but you know who you are) can fill you in on the heady days of the Society Symposia, when the so-called, unofficial (because there wasn’t an official one) “Hospitality Suite” was whichever room was occupied by Brad Townsend and Don Beardslee. They would arrive in the host city, purchase between $500 and $1000 of really great liquor and other drinkables, and proceed to hold court in what we fondly called “Brad and Beardslee’s Bar.” My goodness I learned a lot in those sessions. And the scary thing is, I Remember so much of it! Volumetrically speaking, I had no earthly reason to remember much of anything.

What was the “Hospitality Suite” by night turned in to more of a “Hospital” when the sun rose, but that’s another story.

We’re all older and wiser (?) now (or is it just the loss of those Party-Hardy brain cells), and miss Brad and Don dearly, but those were very different days!

Jeff, we’re looking forward to a most congenial gathering! Thanks for facilitating the lubrication.

K.

[Mercury]

Hey DagLab,

What’s funny about it?

Albert.

[Mercury]

Wow. Lunacy must love company, because I reviewed a very similar set of published instructions for making daguerreotypes in the Daguerreian Society Newsletter, Vol.4, No.6, November 1992. (I give my immediate permission to CDags to reprint it, and I can supply a copy of the original publication to CDags as well… under the How NOT to Make Daguerreotypes department!)

In this case, the author recommended building a mercury pot consisting of an inverted metal 4-sided ‘chimney’-style kitchen food shredder and the top of a stainless steel roll-film developing tank filled with mercury; then wrapping that assembly in aluminum foil and perching it atop a Sterno ‘canned-heat’ (jellied alcohol) stove. He recommended doing this procedure in a darkroom with “adequate ventilation.” That was the sum total of his coverage of safety, other than to say not to spill the mercury (which would be impossible not to do with this contraption.)

He sold these booklets (all of 6 pages of text for the whole process), complete with ISBN number! I can only hope he didn’t have many buyers. Needless to say, my review was rather more searing than being directly in the open flame of his jellied alcohol.

Maybe there’s a future place on CDags for the Daguerreian Darwin Awards. No… I take that back. Rather, I hope that thanks to CDags and all it’s careful contributors, such antics are history and will be studied and learned from as such.

Dag safely, all –

K

[Mercury]

To me, “Ductless fume hood” is like “jumbo shrimp.”

(Pardon the analogy in English to all of our international readers… it is an oxymoron.)

I choose not to assume that any ductless fume hood that I can afford will filter and release air back into my environment safely. It is inherently a faith-based system. Other than by very expensive air sampling, which is historical and not real-time, how will you know that the filtered air is safe other than by believing what you’re told by the manufacturer of your ductless hood?

Thank you Photolytic, and I agree that for B-dags good room ventilation is fine if your I-box is tight.

If you want a fume hood, then go the distance: cut the hole in wall or roof, install the ducts and a good suction fan (preferably mounted outside the work room to pull air out through the hood), and keep the velocity of air entering the face of the hood above 125 linear feet per minute when in use. Get the bad air outside and away from you. I also heartily agree with jgmotamedi on this.

p.s. Sandy Barrie’s story is told by himself in the 1992 Daguerreian (Society) Annual. (Maybe CDags can get Sandy’s permission to reproduce it on this site?)

Thanks,

KN

[Mercury]

Hello David,

My name is Ken Nelson, I’ve earned a minor reputation as a daguerreotypist over the last 34 years… I now live on Bainbridge Island (no ferries from Tacoma!) My fault, I haven’t been keeping up with CDags like I should, so I missed your posts.

Absolutely take Jason up! Get to work, earn stripes. I’m not going to be working much until November (won’t be available much either) but I’d like to meet you then. We need more Left Coast Daguerreians.

Ken

[Mercury]

Hey Jason,

Andy gave you good advice. Please see my article entitled “Mercury and the Daguerreotypist” from the 1994 Daguerreian Annual in the Resources category on this web site. Interestingly, I’m not surprised that your doc didn’t know alot about the tests available or which is best. My doctor recently asked to read the article since I’d asked about getting a mercury screen done and told him what I’m doing, and he found it very informative.

Hair test is worthless. It’s like digging for fossils. Blood test can be compromised if the blood also contains any iodine, which of course we’re working with also.(I’m still trying to run this one down from a test I had done quite a while ago.) “Organic” mercury is any mercury compound involving carbon, of which methyl mercury (CH3Hg+)is the most prevalent. Careful daguerreotypists will get more mercury from eating long-lived, top-of-food-chain fish like Swordfish or Tuna, in the form of methyl mercury, than they will the metallic, or elemental mercury,if they’re careful.

Even at low levels of elemental mercury exposure, which still can be damaging to primarily the kidneys in the course of the body disposing of it, a certain amount of the elemental mercury is converted by human body processes to the methyl mercury cation, which passes through the blood-brain barrier and is cumulative… very difficult to flush out. That’s why making sure you’re working safely with Hg and getting tested periodically is, in my opinion, worthwhile.

Get BOTH blood and urine screens done… since they give a look at different exposure histories. Particularly if you are working very frequently.

Thanks Andy, neat links!

Ken

[Mercury]

Josiah, Count on me. Albert.

[Mercury]

Jesse, hmmm. Bone Room. Photographs@KaufmaNelson.com. I have not forgotten.

Ken

[Mercury]

[Mercury]

Welcome to HgWorld! Yah, I’d say there WAS a whole lot that went right the first time… congratulations!

A few comments and then you’ll just have to get back to work. The “slate” you mention looks like a bit of mercury “frosting” in non-image areas. Every mercury pot is different, so solving it will be a process of elimination. Your development time doesn’t sound unreasonable, I usually go for 3-4 minutes at 175F or so, and frosting begins to occur in my pot at some point after that. (Some workers go a lot longer at a lower temp, who can argue with Irving Pobboravsky and Mike Robinson?, which I’m now experimenting with.) You’ll just have to experiment to find your pot’s optimum time/temp. It can also have to do with humidity in the pot and/or lab, and/or condensation on the plate, and/or the distance from mercury-surface to the plate. No simple answers. Oh heck, and excess bromine too, but I don’t think that is a factor in your case.

Another thing you’ll have to find is your optimum sensitization. By the sound of it, your sensitization of this plate would have rendered it somewhat contrasty which might account for some of the lack of shadow detail. (And it does look a bit underexposed.) A somewhat ‘heavier’ sensitization might help. My baseline starting point is Iodine to just hints of rose, then Br to a first noticeable change to a deeper rose, and then back 1/2 the first I time. Observing changes just within the first yellow is more difficult than observing the change from yellow to rose, so for me, the initial I-Br sensitization becomes more consistent plate-to-plate. I know others have different and very successful ways of managing plate contrast, but I try to keep my first Iodine and Br consistent, and vary plate contrast with the second I time: shorter second I for more contrast and longer for less, always calculated as a fraction of the first Iodine time. (I learned this trick from Tom Young of Colorado.) Varying contrast with second I time also changes plate sensitivity, faster with shorter second I, progressively less sensitive as second I time is extended. Again, you’ll have to see if this works for you, and if it doesn’t it doesn’t. It’s the Nature of the Process for each of us to find our own best way.

Since you are now targeting two color-points when sensitizing (first I color and Br color,) standardizing the light with which you view these colors is critical. I use a 20 watt halogen lamp 18 inches from a piece of white mat board, and view the reflection of the mat board in the plate. Jerry Spagnoli uses almost no light at all. We both manage to make good daguerreotypes (OK, him more so than me.) The important thing is consistency.

You mentioned your darkroom being “too bright”… with safelight? If you are working under safelight, and if the light is safe for modern photographic papers, then it’s safe for daguerreotypes. I use an 8×10-inch Kodak 1A light-red safelight (designed for blue-sensitive graphic arts films, similar spectral sensitivity to dags) with a 15 watt watt bulb. It’s pleasantly bright, and makes everything in my small lab quite visible. I make sure the plate gets no white-light exposure after it goes in the box for second Iodine. Again, this is just how I work, with all due respect to other daguerreians’ successful methods.

A couple of my personal “rules to live by” as a mercury daguerreian (I only say that, and sad to say, because I’ve never been a becquerel daguerreian):

1) Put five daguerretoypists and a cat in a room and lock the door until the debate stops. Only the cat will leave the room knowing the “right way” to make daguerreotypes, and it won’t tell you.

2) In the immortal words of Irving Pobboravsky, in all things daguerreian, “Consult the Process.”

Keep going, you’ve made a great start!

Merc

[Mercury]

Hi Jason,

Yes, that one is very nice. Many copies available on AbeBooks.com, but complete and in the slip-case, it will cost at least 5 times what Shadowcatcher’s one does. The cool thing about the Winter House edition is that it presents both Daguerre’s first edition published by Giroux in France, and the first English edition by McLean’s, London, 1839, as well as other interesting text and images. The last image in the “Introduction” section is a 1971 daguerreotype of skyscrapers in Manhattan by none other than cdags member Harvey Zucker!

The American Photographic Historical Society also put one out in 1989 for their 20th Anniversary. It was reprinted from the first English language edition published by McLean’s. It usually starts at over US $20.

My sister gave me one that she found in Paris. It was reprinted by Rumeur des Ages editions, La Rochelle, Fr. in 1982 from the Giroux “Neuvelle Edition” which Giroux noted was the “corrected version, and augmented by a portrait of the author.” This reprint’s reproduction of Grevedon’s lithograph portrait of Daguerre is very nice, high quality.

Hm. This got me thinking… I’ll write to Gary Ewer to see if he knows how many various reprints have been published, perhaps just since 1970, just to put a limit on it.

[Mercury]

You’re welcome Jon…

I’ve communicated with him and he has more than 10, which he got from the original publisher, but for $9.95 plus a couple of bucks for mailing… cool!

My copy is on it’s way also.

Ken

p.s.

[Mercury]

Hey RonF, we might just have to change your member name to “McGuyver.”

And, just like the Beatles, you spoke volumes with Number 9!

[Mercury]

… and the lessons learned by mistake are far more likely to be remembered than the lessons learned by success…

Merci Simone, Irv, drdag, and Festus

[Mercury]

Festus,

A cotton-ball crammed into the neck of your funnel with work, but hey, this is GOLD we’re talking about. A box of filter papers is not that expensive from Cole-Parmer or Aldrich. I’ll go with Dagist and recommend the Whatman paper. I also use it.

Cotton balls retain a lot of solution, which equals either waste or a lot of distilled water rinsing, which dilutes your gilding solution. Save the cotton balls for cheap stuff like the thiosulfate fixer. Cotton balls are adequate for that.

Coffee filters actually contribute a fair amount of particulate to the filtered solution from the “downstream” side of the filter surface. I think cotton balls are better, tho not as fast.

The Whatman paper retains very little of the filtered solution, and so can be rinsed with a few millilitres of distilled water to flush most of the good stuff down the funnel where you can use it.

Don’t disrespect the gold. I’ve f***ed up more wonderful plates trying to scrimp on gold or the things that touch it than I care to tell you about. And it hurts worst since it’s the last chemical step in the process.

Oops, I hear Miss Kitty calling…

[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.

[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.

[Mercury]

RonF, I apologize. No fault, no foul. Certainly no crime. I should have recognized that re-use of antique plates might not be a topic to make a casual comment on at first meeting. I’m glad that you’ve had success with them, my success rate was always less than good.

Also, I have spent too much time working in museums, where one daren’t mention such things at all. I learned that the hard way.

Your points are all good and well-taken. It is my personal opinion vis-a-vis successful daguerreeotyping, but I realize on re-reading that it was not said well. Again, I apologize, I did not mean to offend you.

… regarding the puns, I know at least one other avid reader of this blog that would also welcome you to start with your list! I’m afraid the rest, however, would get the keymasters to banish us for ever. Let’s start an alternative daguerreian blog where you CAN’T post without punning!

Sincerely,

Ken

[Mercury]

Festus, I believe you’re on exactly the right track. Go a wee bit beyond the minimum, and then a little bit more. The Goldie-Locks principle applies very well to the daguereotype.

RonF, 99.999% of all antique plates you’ll ever encounter have been treated with gold chloride, so every one of them is a real grind, literally. I have two problems with re-using 19th C. plates… 1) if the plate is so bad that the original image is ready for destruction, I will go through the silver before getting it smooth enough to use again. And 2) if the plate is not bad enough to be ready for destruction, I can’t bear to be the one to irretrievably destroy a piece of history, no matter how small or insignificant. Who knows? Sorry, I’m sounding like a doctor on a TV hospital show I think, but I believe that working with one’s own new, consistent plates is the key to a successful future.

Becquerel or mercury, ungilded plates are MUCH easier to buff off.

Thanks for the appreciation of my weird humor. I don’t have children, but if I did, the threat of getting plated in an electrolytic cell would give a whole new meaning to the term “you’re grounded.” …Cathode? what a sweet name. Is that with a C or a K?

[Mercury]

Festus,

Watch out with the “light repolish.” Enough repolishing has to be done to completely remove the traces of the old image.

Pay attention when you’re sensitizing a re-used plate… if your re-polishing hasn’t been adequate you will probably see a “ghost” of the old image reappear as the plate takes on iodide.

On the other hand, if you notice any greenish tints in what should otherwise be a nice gold-rose of silver iodide, you’re probably very close to having buffed through the silver in those spots. You’ll see that greenish tint when iodizing long before you see copper actually coloring through as you’re buffing.

Some platers will re-plate over old silver when it gets thin. My current plater, whom I would trust to plate my children, has advised me not to bring him my old, worn-through plates. He’s convinced me that new copper or brass will yield the best quality, and with most of the cost of the plate in the silvering, I believe him.

Welcome to the Club!

[Mercury]

Andy, don’tcha just hate it when the rest of your life comes barging in like that? I feel your pain, man.

I’ve been in a sort of similar pattern, and have held the rest of my life at bay by trying to learn a little something about galvanizing.

[Mercury]

Hi Andy,

I wouldn’t worry too much about cross-contamination from sensitizers in the fume hood. The sensitizers are so volatile and reactive that they hate existing alone. If you are at all concerned after sensitizing in your hood, then place an open tray of non-detergent household ammonia in your hood for a few minutes, then turn the fan on. With the kind of airflow you’re talking about, you’d need to have an overwhelming and continuous source of free iodine or bromine in order to affect an exposed plate. Likewise with Hg. This is within my experience, of course. Happy dagging!

KN

[Author]

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