RE: OT: Cleaning up in the darkroom

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From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 04/01/03-01:31:04 PM Z


On Mon, 31 Mar 2003, Joachim Oppenheimer wrote:

> .... But most darkroom contamination come
> from contacts we rarely consider, including our clothes, but especially the
> outside of storage bottles and containers. By the way, I rinse the exterior
> of all my chemistry bottles with plain water after a session. Most of the
> time reasonable care and rinsing are all you need in the darkroom. Joachim

EXACTLY !!! Once about 300 years ago, when I was still developing 35 mm
in the wet darkroom, I kept getting mysterious blobs on negatives, odd
shapes made a million times worse because I was solarizing everything and
every blob on a neg got a double outline -- impossible to spot out.

I damp mopped the whole place before working, but no help. I put a double
filter on the water, no help. Finally, in desperation I examined every
inch of the darkroom with a loupe -- and found that the "shoulders" of the
bottles, especially perma wash & foto flow bottles (last steps) were full
of fluff... partly from some nearby construction I suspect, but also just
in the nature of things.

In any event, since then I wash or damp wipe neck & shoulders of all
bottles all the time. Dichromate I find especially vulnerable,
incidentally, tho potass ferricyanide is too -- no matter how carefully
you pull the dropper in & out, the least bit of moisture makes magic
crystals which sit under the cap threads & on the shoulders, and from
there go wherever they damn please.

J.


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