After the prints have been trimmed, they should be soaked in water for fifteen minutes.  If you have not running water in which to place them, the water should be changed several times.  This preliminary washing must be very thorough, or the toning will not be satisfactory.

To prepare your toning bath, make up first a stock solution of fifteen ounces of water and fifteen grains of chloride of gold and sodium.  The chloride of gold and sodium can be obtained in small bottles which come for the convenience of the amateur prepared in just the desired quantity.

For a toning bath for twenty prints, take ten ounces of water, three grains of sodic bicarbonate, six grains of sodic chloride (common salt), and three ounces of your stock solution of gold.  Add to this bath three ounces of the stock solution of gold that has had three drops of saturated solution of bicarbonate of soda added to it.  This bath should be alkaline, and you can test it with red litmus paper.  If it turns the paper slightly blue, it is ready for use.  Put this bath in a flat tray (porcelain preferably), and then lay the prints in it face down.  Move them all the time, to insure evenness of tone and to prevent spots.  It is a good plan to keep drawing out the undermost one, and putting it on the top.

The prints are of a reddish-brown color when they are put into the toning bath, and in about fifteen or twenty minutes they begin to turn to a rich purplish black.  Experience will teach the amateur at what point the prints should be removed from this bath.  They should lie long enough to have every tinge of red entirely removed, and yet not long enough to turn the prints to a dull gray.

When the prints have been sufficiently toned, they should be thoroughly washed and then put into the fixing bath.  This bath is made of one gallon of water, one pound of sodic hyposulphite, one tablespoonful sodic bicarbonate, and one tablespoonful common salt.

These ingredients should be thoroughly dissolved, and then a portion put in a tray.  This tray must be kept for the fixing bath and not be used for any other purpose.  The prints are put in the tray in the same manner as in the toning bath, and moved continually until they are fixed.

This process should take fifteen minutes, or, if the bath is rather cool, the time may be extended to twenty minutes.

After the prints have been removed from the fixing bath they are put in a strong solution of salt and water, to prevent their blistering.  After they have been in this solution for about five minutes they are then ready for their final washing.  The prints should be left in running water for some hours, and there is very little danger of washing them too long or too thoroughly.

After every trace of the fixing bath has been removed, the prints may be taken from the water and dried between sheets of chemically-pure blotting paper.  They will not curl up when dried in this way, as they do when simply exposed to the air.