I just got started with coating my own paper. Coating pt/pd worked great, but when I tried making salted paper, I got very uneven results. I am using Crane's Planotype #90 paper and a glass coating rod. I first coat the paper with the salting solution, making sure the paper is covered. After it dries, I coat with silver nitrate, again making sure the paper is evenly coated. I am using Photorapher's Formulary's salted paper kit. (I know I can buy machine coated POP paper.)

-- William Marderness (wmarderness@hotmail.com), March 23, 2002

Answers

One idea is to float the paper on the solution. Check out this link for a very good practical/historical lesson on salted paper:

http://albumen.stanford.edu/library/monographs/reilly/chap3.html

-- Jimi Axelsson (jimi@earthling.net), March 23, 2002.

I never had much luck with rod coating salted paper. I would agree that floating is about the best way to do it. You'll get some precipitate in your silver nitrate solution, but it can be filtered off once it has settled. By the way, I never had much luck with the swabbing method either. I also wouldn't expect stellar results with that paper, which also happens to be my paper of choice, unless you've sized it with gelatin; the salting solution sinks too deeply into the fibers for my taste. Try floating the paper on a gelatin salting/sizing solution to suspend the image above the paper. Good luck.

-- Chad Jarvis (cjarvis@nas.edu), March 23, 2002.