I used many gallons of the stuff at one time, but haven't in about 15
years, so it is possible (though not very likely) that what I say is
out of date.
Kodak's Fine line is packaged in the same way as their standard lith
A&B. In fact the most noticable difference in the packaging are the
words "Fine-Line" written in not very large type on it.
I've never seen a formula for fine line, or even one purporting to be a
clone, but compared to the standard litho developers, fine line is less
agressively alkaline. Probably, the "B" part contains less sodium
hydroxide.
The result is that development is also less agressive, allowing you to
hold smaller dots in the film without the dots merging into larger
dots. Typically development is with a 15-20 second initial agitation and
then letting the film rest still on the bottom of the tray for the remainder
of the development time.
Since the developer is less alkaline, I found that the development
process is also more sensitive to acid contamination. My skin chemistry
is apparently more acid than average (in Kodak terms, I am a "ruster")
and I was getting wedges of lower density emanating from where I touched
the film with my bare fingers. The cure was wearing rubber gloves while
handling the film and dipping the gloves in a dilute borax solution
after the stop and fix. Not elegant, but the detail you can hold is so fine
that even small problems become magnified to above the visual threshold.
The results are worth the trouble if you are interested in very fine
line or dot information on your film. I was able to use the
reticulation pattern of a collotype plate (similar to, but more
beautiful and controllable than the texture of non-glare glass)
as a halftone screen for a series of images I was making.
Hope this helps
Carson Graves
carson@ileaf.com