The ways possible to getting started making emulsions are as varied as our individual personalities.  Some people are happiest waiting until they have a full lab in place and have read all the literature they can get their hands on; others want to give things a try with the minimum fuss and expense.  In a field as broad and deep as emulsion making, any approach that leads to a print or a glass plate or coated film is the right approach.  The Light Farm will try to speak to all strategies as we grow and benefit from the experiences of our contributing editors.

Below is my darkroom and setup for making emulsions.  I came to all this from many years of darkroom experience, both personal and commercial, so I had a lot of 'stuff' in place and I enjoy scrounging and inventing.  That path is not necessary to get started.  A very minimal amount of experience and equipment will do very nicely.  Learning a few basic vocabulary words and a couple of chemistry concepts is all that's needed.  For some, that's all that will ever be needed to create the art they feel.  For others, it will be the foundation of more elaborate explorations. 

I am continually exploring new avenues and looking for ways to improve on what I'm doing.  My workflow adapts accordingly.  I wouldn't begin to pretend I know all there is to know about emulsions.  (Actually, I'm counting on there always being something new to learn.)  As I find a better or different way to do something, I'll pass it on.  That will be the goal of all our contributing editors.

The following vocab words and concepts will get you started working and understanding the recipes and literature.  Reading from the Light Farm literature list will rapidly pad your comfort zone.  There is a key concept here that is crucial: learning is a positive feedback loop.  You will not know how to make emulsions until you start making emulsions.  With each lap around the circle you will understand a couple more ideas and procedures.  The great gobs of words written by Baker, for example, will actually start, first, to make sense, and then to sound like poetry, as the cadence of slightly archaic style weaves through your experience. 

Dry plate (or gelatin dry plate):   Silver gelatin negative emulsion coated on glass, dried before storage and exposure.  Same as "glass negative".  (As opposed to 'wet plate', which is not a gelatin-based process).

Gaslight paper: Any of a variety of very slow papers.  The name comes from the fact that the paper didn't require a darkroom.  It could be worked in the light of a low-burning gaslight. Today, that implies a bright amber safelight, although any paper should be tested for light sensitivity.  Because of their speed, gaslight papers are by definition contact printing papers.

Emulsion: Photographically, a silver halide solution, dispersed and suspended in a viscous material (colloid ) - gelatin in our case - along with any number of other specialized additions.

Silver Halides: Light sensitive compounds of silver formed during emulsion making: silver chloride (AgCl), silver bromide (AgBr) and silver iodide (AgI), often designated generically as AgX.  There are any number of chemicals that can contribute the Cl, Br, or I parts of a silver halide.  The 'Ag' part is always from silver nitrate (AgNO₃).

Bloom: verb: In a recipe, means to swell gelatin in water.

Bloom: noun: "Bloom number", a measure of the hardness of the gelatin.  We generally use 250 bloom (hard/photographic gelatin).

Frilling: On glass negatives, the emulsion lifting or floating away, usually from the edges of the plate.

Acidic: pH below 7.0

Alkaline: pH above 7.0

Albumen: Egg white

Baryta: Shorthand for baryta-coated paper, today usually glossy.  Gives the smoothest surface for coating.

"Subbed" (film): From 'substrate'; film base that has been coated with material that helps the emulsion adhere through the various processing steps.

Halation and Antihalation layer: During exposure of film or glass plates, light passes through the emulsion and bounces off the substrate and back again through the emulsion.  This can cause halos to form around objects => halation.  Modern films have a layer that prevents the light bounce-back and eliminates halation => antihalation.

Surfactant: Wetting agent. I use Photoflo 600 and Everclear for almost all my work.

Everclear: High proof ethanol alcohol and for all intents and purposes indispensable for emulsion work.  Although Everclear is a brand name, it is also the generic reference to similar alcohols.  In Oregon the brand is Clear Spring.  Everclear is illegal in a number of states, but worth the drive to find.  Buy it by the half gallon.

Stages of Emulsion Making:

Emulsification and Ripening are the two parts of the first stage of emulsion making.  Shredding (if needed), Digestion and adding Finals are all part of the second half right before coating.   If time constraints require, the washed noodles can be lightproof refrigerated for a number of days before coating.  This breaks the entire emulsion making process into three manageable steps.  It is possible to go from raw materials to finished prints in one week of a couple of hours of work a day.

Emulsification (also called Precipitation): The first and main reaction of silver halide formation (the addition of silver nitrate to at least one salt).  This step determines in large part the characteristics of the final emulsion. 

Ripening (also called Physical Ripening or First Ripening): This step determines whether the emulsion will be a fine-grained slow emulsion or a larger grained faster one.  You will sometimes see the entire step referred to as Ostwald ripening, although this is technically a subset process of ripening.

Shredding (also called Noodling): In washed emulsions, breaking the ripened, chilled emulsion into little pieces ('noodles', 'shreds', or 'worms') to facilitate washing out ammonia (if used) and excess salts that could re-crystallize on film or a plate.

Digestion (also called Chemical Ripening, Second Ripening, or After-ripening): At this point various additives are inserted primarily for influencing sensitivity and gradation.  (For instance, additives are necessary to make a film panchromatic, i.e. sensitive to the full visible spectrum. Silver halides are naturally sensitive to only blue-violet light.)

Finals: The final addition of stabilizers, hardeners, surfactants, and/or preservatives.  The list of things possible to add to emulsion is impressive:

A Personal Opinion: An emulsion can be a very simple thing or a mind-bogglingly complex thing.  Not surprisingly, as the technology marched through its history, it became increasingly complex.  The modern products are as close to a miracle as I require.  It would take a small library and a degree in photographic chemistry to understand everything, even if most of the information weren't secreted away in locked vaults.  All that elusive information is seductive, but not a necessary or perhaps even desirable starting place.

The ins and outs and ups and downs of each and every addition possible are  worthy lines of exploration, but it is my belief that we are better off starting simple (as did Abney and Eder) and learning the complexities a step at a time - in effect retracing the forward movement of the history of emulsion making.  This is not only more feasible, but also more likely to succeed, than starting from  state-of-the-art emulsion manufacturing technology and from there trying to backward engineer a just-simple-enough product.

I've come to accept, and maybe even celebrate, that emulsion (at least I♥) comes in three varieties: Crap, Fairydust, and Full Monty.  It's been awhile since I made Crap.  That was mostly a question of getting the surfactant right and taking temperature control seriously.  My goal has been reliable Full Monty.  That's what I want when I print foggy landscapes or other high key images.  No peppering at all.  Fairydust is the stuff that has microscopic peppering (literally visible only through a microscope) with the very rare visible black grain.  I don't consider it a big issue.  I just keep out the 'busy' negatives or the new negatives I'm testing for Fairydust and save the foggy images for Full Monty. 

What's interesting is that a Fairydust batch of emulsion can be particularly pretty.  The highlights have a life of their own and the blacks are deep and lustrous, but there's no mistaking the microscopic peppering (silver halide grain aggregates that are black upon development even without being exposed to light).  It turns out that "perfection" may not even be the right goal.  Which leads to a thought:

A certain amount of control over any process is a satisfying - and necessary - thing, but I wonder if a need for too much control, with the goal of the handmade product indistinguishable from a commercial one, is exactly the wrong approach to take.  It changes the goal line from creative control to perfection and is strangely at odds with the attitude that digital, for example, is "too perfect".   The concept that the only acceptable photograph is a flawless photograph is a brand new one.  It came to us with digital and Photoshop and the 'delete' key.  The photographers we look back to for inspiration had a different view.

'Pepper' spots can be removed with a fine, sharp needle. ( I further sharpened my spotting needle on a whetstone.)    It's very much like removing a tiny sliver from a child's finger.  Magnification helps. The result is essentially invisible on any paper except baryta.  White spots are treated the same way as on commercial paper (dyes and a tiny brush).