More small steps
I had a fair amount of time this weekend to work on things daguerreian and I made small progress on a number of fronts. I finally created a lens board for my camera – amazing how quick something can go when you have the right tools. Version 1 was made using a wonky old backsaw and didn’t fit right. V2 was made with my new Ryobi portable table saw and looks to have 1/32″ tolerances. I had a bit of a fight boring the hole for the lens – the holesaw I bought turned out not to fit my mini-drillpress, so I ended up using a roto-zip spiral blade in a dremel tool fit into dremel’s “router base”. Since I found a flange to hold the lens a while back (on ebay) the slight wobblies in the hole won’t show. That project is still unfinished as the foggy day today slowed down the paint drying.
I also experimented a bit with hand polishing some copper. I still haven’t decided finally on a polishing method but I had some various caswells compound “bars” sitting around from an uncompleted project from several years ago. I decided to see if I could melt the bar or dissolve it in oil to form a slurry to polish with. That would be “no” on both counts. The bars are not oil soluble, and gently playing a propane flame over a piece just sets it on fire. (Nice test of my fume hood though – I noticed that when the fan runs at full speed there is a lot of turbulence in the compartment – when I turn down the flow rate the smoke extraction was much smoother).
In any case I finally just sanded a small chunk of bar flat and rubbed it on the copper plate to see what would happen. Voila – polishing occurred. Sort of. The bar turned copper colored and the copper got shinier. But not much. And then I finally got it what “mill marks” must mean. :( And then I gained a lot of respect for people who polish by hand… Looks like I will need to continue to learn about this whole polishing thing.
Makes me want to experiment more with silvered glass – to see if there is a way to keep the silver coating on the glass through the various steps of the daguerreotype process. Probably not, but I was also doing some price comparisons this weekend. It looks like a 4″x6′ 18 ga .999 fine silver plate would be about $80, a 4×6 copper plate with silver on one side would be about $40 and silver on glass would be about $1.80. Oh well – we shall see.
I also picked up some photo paper and developing chemicals to test the 8×10 camera once I get the lens installed. I plan to use the paper as “film” and then scan and convert it to a positive in photoshop. Then I will find out if my bargain lens is “interesting” or “crummy”. I did discover that Calumet is no longer going to carry chemistry based supplies in the store -only online. They were out of almost everything – I will have to buy my stop-bath on the web.
A fun weekend rounded out by a few more minor improvements to the castle infrastructure. Now to go fix my daughter’s computer so she can do her homework.
Happy dagging.
Daguerreotype Process | andy | October 26, 2008
8x10, camera, castle, daguerreotype process, fan, fume hood, lens, photography, Plate preparation, Plates, polishing, silver, speed control
If you’re just printing paper to see if the camera works then you really don’t need stop. Just a water bath between the developer and fix would suffice.
I spent a great deal of time polishing copper this weekend and realized that plain copper sheets are quite laborious to polish. I’ve spend 5 hours so far and still sill have a few more to go. The plates I’m prepping are quarter plates (3.25×4.25) and I think I got the price to somewhere around $15 per plate ($5 for the copper, $10 for the plating). Though I’d like to get plates that are more polished to begin with which will raise the price I’m sure.
I’m looking forward to see what you come up with on the silvered glass front.
Hi Jon – thanks for the tip about the stop bath. That will save me some time and a few dollars. I will report on my silvered glass experiment, but don’t hold out too much hope. I am certainly not the first person who ever thought of doing this in the last 150 years and the only evidence I ever found on the web was a picture of a failure. There are some twists added by modern chemistry that may make a difference though – so I have decided to at least make the attempt. Besides, I thought the failure was really lovely. Here it is posted by the artist Jason Motamedi — http://bp1.blogger.com/_C1o_oyshTFw/Rj6KAfHMgkI/AAAAAAAAAAk/QxgUWb0a4W8/s1600-h/PeelingDag.jpg
In the meantime I still plan to keep working on the copper polishing issue.
I’ve become friendly with a local mad scientist that is going to coat some glass with silver for me. He uses the equipment for making first-surface mirrors for the LASER lab.
Don’t try to melt the bars of polishing compound, they contain waxy binders to hold the polishing compound together. That will ruin the plates.
I buy powdered Iron Oxide on eBay by the pound and dry it in my oven (ask your wife first!). I only buy the red and black though as that’s the finest grit. I sprinkle the stuff on my buffing board and use that as a final polish after the machine polishing.
J
Hi Jonathan-
I will very much look forward to the results of your mirror experiments. And thanks for the tips about the polishing compounds. I thought the wax might melt easily or dissolve in oil and I was going to try it at the copper polishing stage only. Then clean off the gunk and get them plated. All for naught – it didn’t work anyway.
I am still really resisting using the polishing wheels – mostly because I don’t have a place to do “dirty work” that is separate from my clean area. I have plenty of time to continue mulling it over though as I still have many other small tasks to complete yet!
If you want to do it by hand then THE man to talk to is Mike Robinson. I’m not sure if that man has anything that plugs in in his darkroom other than a safelight and a vent fan!