Re: LC-1 developer question
There are a lot of things that don't really matter in real life and if you look at old literature you'll find a lot of them. Both Metol and sulfite can react with molecular oxygen dissolved in water, but in reality, the rate of that oxidation reaction is rather slow. Compounds that react with oxygen fast are not very useful as a developer preservative. It doesn't really make much difference regardless of which gets dissolved first, since a pinch of sulfite is not instantly removing dissolved oxygen. If absolutely minimal oxidation of Metol is required (such as in research developers), it is probably more important to deaerate the water and dissolve all ingredients as quickly as possible. However, if deaeration is necessity for a particular developer, I would have to say that the developer is poorly formulated and not good enough for practice. If you dissolve Metol separately in an alkaline solution and combine with high salt content, it may be easier to make all the solids go into the solution. However, it is difficult to say whether the dissolved state is stable. Even if the concentration in the bulk solution exceeds the solubility limit, the solution may be in the supersaturation state. However, if there are some seed crystals, or some debries, or even some rough surface on the container, the crystals may grow on it fast (thus supersaturation decreases) and only then you realize the problem. If the formula is well made and well tested, none of these needs be worried on the user side. -- Ryuji Suzuki "Make something religious and people don't have to deal with it, they can say it's irrelevant." (Bob Dylan, Biograph booklet, 1985)
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