John Melanson (john@audiologic.com)
Wed, 28 Jul 1999 21:42:21 -0600
Part of my reply was lost, try again.
The recipe should be made up in solution. Start with about 3/4 of the
desired volume of cold water, dissolve the borax, and the slowly add the lye
with stirring. The lye will heat the mixture. Now add water up to the
desired final volume. Depending on the strength of the solution, you may
need to warm it a bit to get everything into solution.
If you are making PMK B, I recommend making to twice the volume, or half the
concentration. Then use twice as much. If your darkroom ever gets cold,
some of the metaborate will crystallize, and then it's really hard to get
all back into solution. The weaker solution solves that.
What happened with the heat was that the red devil was hydrated by taking
water from the borax, which has a lot of water in the crystals
(decahydrate). Water plus lye gives a lot of heat, that's why it boils as a
drain cleaner. Mixing "dry" could be quite dangerous.
The dry mixture is hard to use anyway, because there's no way to guarantee a
uniform mix. When you measure some out, you won't get the proper ratio of
borax/lye. Just make it in place, when mixing up developer, or whatever.
Even though it's a common household product, lye is really nasty stuff. It
attacks fat, protein, etc. Makes a great drain cleaner, but would just as
soon dissolve your hand, eye, or whatever. It's a good reason to use
gloves,
eye protection, etc.
I use it in toners, and I'm really careful. The stuff deserves respect.
Once in a solution with borax, it's much tamer. If you're uncomfortable
with the risks, don't use it. Curiosity is a bad reason to mix chemicals.
Cheers, John Melanson
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sandy King [mailto:sanking@hubcap.clemson.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 1999 8:30 PM
> To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
> Subject: Re: sodium metaborate, to make?
>
>
>
> Out of curiosity more than need (since I already have on hand
> over 10lbs of
> sodium metaborate) I mixed up some Red Devil Lye and 20 Mule Team Borax at
> the 1-5 ratio as recommended. About an hour later I noticed that
> the bottle
> containing the mixture was very hot to the touch, and upon opening it,
> discovered that the mix was lumped together and appeared to to be very
> moist, as if it had absorbed a lot of water from the air.
>
> What happened? None of the previous references to this brew mentioned
> anything like this!
>
> Sandy King
>
>
>
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