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Old 2nd February 2011, 04:23 PM
Trevor Crone's Avatar
Trevor Crone Trevor Crone is offline
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Roy, I used to mix my own gold toners at one time, and I too still have a couple of vials of gold chloride. They are usually 1gm.

My favourite gold toner formulas were;

Gold toner solution a/b:

solution A
thiourea...................4g
distilled water..........225ml

solution B
gold chloride.............1g
distilled water...........225ml

use 236ml water plus 29ml soln. A plus 29ml soln. B plus a further 236ml water, then add slowly, 5 drops of concentrated sulphuric acid. Mix well. This working solution lasts a long time and can be discarded when toning becomes too slow.

This one is a bit more user-friendly although the citric acid does not keep too well;

Gold toner 3 bath, a, b, c;

solution A
thiourea..................3.5g
distilled water.........250ml

solution B
citric acid.................3.5g
distilled water.........250ml

solution C
gold chloride............1g
distilled water..........250ml

use 1 part of each to 10 parts water.
This toner used to give the most delicate grey blue tones to chlorobromide papers like Record Rapid and was certainly a favourite of mine.

I also used to use Nelson gold toner but of course this gives brown tones, particularly effective with bromide papers.

Thiourea is nasty being carcinogenic so do not get it on your person and of course avoid breathing air-bourne dust.
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Last edited by Trevor Crone; 2nd February 2011 at 04:27 PM.
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