Mixing Palladium Sol. 3

[Photo Engineer]

All food grade salt (Sodium Chloride or NaCl) contains anti-caking agents which affect the imaging propreties with silver emulsions.

I have no idea what they will do for other types of photoprocesses, but I wanted to let you know that there is an extraneous ingredient in food salt, and it does affect emulsion making FYI, FWIW.

PE

[Jorge]

All food grade salt (Sodium Chloride or NaCl) contains anti-caking agents which affect the imaging propreties with silver emulsions.

I have no idea what they will do for other types of photoprocesses, but I wanted to let you know that there is an extraneous ingredient in food salt, and it does affect emulsion making FYI, FWIW.

PE

Not pickling and canning salt, it is just rock salt. They dont add anything precisely so that there are not any sediments left after the pickling or canning process.

[Ray Bidegain]

I would be interested in contacting them to get a price and organizing a group buy if there are some interested parties.

Ray Bidegain

[donbga]

I would be interested in contacting them to get a price and organizing a group buy if there are some interested parties.

Ray Bidegain

Ray,

I'm definitely interested!

Don Bryant

[photomc]

I would be interested as well, even if a few of us ended up splitting afterwords. Noticed a big differnece in how much I used going from 4x5 to 5x7 and really noticed it with 8x10. Can see why this works well for the folks that print BIG :o .

[Jim Moore]

I would be interested in contacting them to get a price and organizing a group buy if there are some interested parties.

Ray Bidegain

Count me in too..

Thanks,
Jim

[Ray Bidegain]

In the past I have contacted my sales rep and arranged for the price. I then collect from all the interested parties. When I make the order I have them package the material in sperate packages for each buyer that way there is no chance for contamination. Once the packages arrive I send them out the participants. It has worked well in the past and I have some others who are interested as well. I will post more on Monday.

Ray Bidegain

[Photo Engineer]

Not pickling and canning salt, it is just rock salt. They dont add anything precisely so that there are not any sediments left after the pickling or canning process.

Jorge, pickeling and canning salt may be called 'rock salt' but it has gone through several refinements before certificatation as 'food grade'. There is also "brining salt" which is either for brining meats (like corned beef) and fish (sallted cod). I believe that this brining salt may represent another level of purity depending on whether it is used for butchered meats or whole fish. Rock salt itself is the first crop of crystals from brines and as such it is black dirty stuff. It is more like what they use for street salting around here. (Although even that has a lot of additives.) It is not what I associate with food.

Rock salt comes in varying degrees of purity but has one thing in common. It comes as large mainly cubic crystals of NaCl. I would therefore not suggest that anyone blindly buy salt with the label "rock salt" on it.

Any of these salts below 'reagent grade' or 'analytical grade' contain enough extraneous material that there may be an effect on photographic properties. The generic rock salts fall into this category.

I have tested this out to my satisfaction with AgX. I really don't know about Pt/Pd and other imaging systems, but at the cost of precious metals, it would be best to use the best halide rather than chance the loss of some Pt or Pd. Don't you think so?

Anyhow, you use what you wish. I'm just trying to put out some precautionary notes which some people may or may not find important or interesting.

PE

[Jorge]

Hmmmm....so I guess Morton salt is lying when they print in the box "Salt, nothing added"...huh?

[Photo Engineer]

Jorge, I cant answer that. There are regulations that say that if an ingredient is harmless and is below a certain level, it does not need to be mentioned. Also, if they didn't add anything, if something was already there, then there is no problem.

But to add to this, all I can say is that salt cakes badly unless silicates and other ingredients such as rice powder (starch) are added. I remember as a child during WWII, this was not done and we had to keep breaking the salt up in our salt shakers to keep it pouring. In fact, the Morton label went to the little girl with umbrella when they started putting in the additives. They used to advertize that Morton salt would pour in a rainstorm. Their motto was "when it rains, it pours".

So, maybe it is not a lie, but rather a loophole? IDK.

I have analytical grade NaCl here. It is one big lump in the bottle and sitting next to it is a container of Morton salt (non-iodized) and it is just like fresh sea sand and says "nothing added". I get different results from 3 batches of salt. Rock salt, food salt (nothing added) and reagent grade.

PE