I'm curious about how much inconvenience people are willing to tolerate. So here are a couple of questions:
Borax availability is not a problem for me either. It is just that I do not like to weigh out and mix solids just before developing film. Toying around with home brew developers is jolly good fun, but when developing film I prefer stock solutions over just-in-time mixing of solids.
That’s why I was experimenting with a glycol/borax/TEA combination earlier in the thread. When I’m back from some travel, I’ll resume that.
Hey no worries, thanks for that. I didn't take it personally, I was trying to understand if I might have been missing an important idea.FWIW, my two favorite developers are both 2-part developers. A single developer solution is not what I was trying to say.
I’ll keep a close eye on your experiments to come.
A big thank you for your efforts so far and safe travels!!
Had a quick business trip to LA and now I'm pretty well set for developer for awhile! Gotta love US prices sometimes—even in expensive California. 1.84kg of borax for about $9. This stuff works perfectly well in this formula. Also brought back 100g of phenidone from Bostick and Sullivan.
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Yes, we are spoiled, and yet we still bitch. I was playing with PC-512 over last weekend and tried the borax version along with the Kodalk(sodium metaborate) version. I didn't have my PH meter, so I just used1/3 less sodium metaborate per volume than borax. Both worked just fine and I will be doing some more work with PC512 now that I have my PH meter at hand. I think I could cut the Kodalk back slightly more, but the negatives from both borax and Kodalk were very close.
John, once you have the amount of Kodalk dialed-in, please post that amount to this thread. Others would be interested. In fact, I suspect the Kodalk could be dissolved into glycol with the other two chemicals.
Mark
I get all my borax and sodium carbonate at the local supermarket laundry aisle. I used to get my sodium hydroxide there, too; last time I looked they didn't have any (I ordered a can from Amazon), but next time I need some I'll try the other grocery chain in the area. Sodium thiosulfate I get from the local hardware store's pool and spa section; sulfuric acid (concentrated!) and hydrochloric acid (don't know offhand what strength, but the label or SDS should say) are available from home improvement stores, along with copper sulfate from the same source (root killer for drains; copper sulfate plus nearly any acid plus non-iodized table salt is one half of a B&W reversal bleach -- clear household ammonia from the cleaning section of the supermarket is the other). Sodium sulfite I had to order, couldn't find any local pool supplies that had that instead of thiosulfate for chlorine reducer). Acetaminophen (paracetamol) supplies the developing agent for Parodinal, and where else would you get instant coffee than a supermarket? Not to mention beer (for Beerenol). Vitamin C can be had in tablets at the supermarket, but I got a bottle of powder at a health supplement store -- should be enough to last decades when used only for Caffenol.
Next time I need propylene glycol, I'll try to remember to buy a gallon (for about what I paid for a quart from Amazon) at Tractor Supply.
Had a quick business trip to LA and now I'm pretty well set for developer for awhile! Gotta love US prices sometimes—even in expensive California. 1.84kg of borax for about $9. This stuff works perfectly well in this formula. Also brought back 100g of phenidone from Bostick and Sullivan.
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Arm & Hammer™ Super Washing Soda = sodium carbonate?
S. Carbonate / washing soda has vanished from grocery store shelves - part of the government's War on Common Sense.
You can make S. Carbonate from S. Bicarbonate (baking soda). Spread it out on a glass dish and put it into a ~200F oven for half an hour - you should be left with anhydrous S. Carbonate; keep it in a glass jar so it doesn't absorb moisture from the air and cake up.
I wasn't sure of the temperature and Google came up with 200 - which did seem a trifle 'cold' to me. But Wikipedia sez S. Bicarbonate starts to decompose at 122F (50C).Is 200 F (93 C) high enough? This experiment says it should be over 110 C (230 F).
Excellent, John. Looking forward to seeing how things went.Yes, we are spoiled, and yet we still bitch. I was playing with PC-512 over last weekend and tried the borax version along with the Kodalk(sodium metaborate) version. I didn't have my PH meter, so I just used1/3 less sodium metaborate per volume than borax. Both worked just fine and I will be doing some more work with PC512 now that I have my PH meter at hand. I think I could cut the Kodalk back slightly more, but the negatives from both borax and Kodalk were very close.
As I mentioned several times on this thread, aside from buffering behavior, which we will see whether it matters, the only way to make that a single solution is to use a lot of glycol and a much more dilute solution.John, once you have the amount of Kodalk dialed-in, please post that amount to this thread. Others would be interested. In fact, I suspect the Kodalk could be dissolved into glycol with the other two chemicals.
Arm & Hammer™ Super Washing Soda = sodium carbonate?
While at my second batch of University I worked for a couple of summers as a customs officer.
I guarantee that if I had opened your bag and found this, In would have looked at you and asked something like "You flew all the way from Dublin to LA and back and you are bringing back this!!!!????"
S. Carbonate / washing soda has vanished from grocery store shelves - part of the government's War on Common Sense.
Yeah, and most grocery stores have it that I have been to in the last few years. I saw it at the same store in CA (Ralph's) and also at King Sooper's in Denver, and Fred Meyer in Portland, OR. All are Kroger subsidiaries, so if you have one of those locally, I'd check there.
It seems I'll have to check some other grocery stores.
If you have sodium metaborate lying around, and you're willing to dissolve chemicals into hot propylene glycol, you might try making some Mocon, which the OP references in his article. The Mocon article is here and here. Mocon was designed to give Xtol quality in a concentrate that lasts years when refrigerated or frozen. For both PC-512 and Mocon, you (1) create a PG-based concentrate, and (2) create a separate water-solution of an alkali. Mocon was tested on 11 films, all of which were measured with a densitometer and graphed, so films are known to attain box-speeds and have well-behaved H-D curves. One warning: I'm biased, because I am the inventor of Mocon.
@relistan : sodium metaborate will dissolve in PG, and borax has a similar composition, so it might dissolve in PG as well. If borax does not dissolve, you could try sodium metaborate in your formula instead, as John asked about. By dissolving one of those, you might be able to create a single concentrate to be used like HC-110 that yields D-76 quality. Folks would like that.
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