Re: Aluminum for photo trays

I would definitely avoid aluminum. It's much more easily corroded by
acid and base, and it's generally more reactive compared to stainless
steel, PVC, HDPE, and other kinds of plastic. Aluminum can have
photographically significant effect as well.

It's quite expensive to buy large trays made for darkroom work, but in
my experience good trays pay off. If you want to avoid the expense,
I'd look for the dish to put under washing machine at Home Depot. If
the aluminum pan is otherwise perfect in size and rigidity, I'd at
least coat it with epoxy boat paint before use.

--
Ryuji Suzuki
"You have to realize that junk is not the problem in and of itself.
Junk is the symptom, not the problem."
(Bob Dylan 1971; source: No Direction Home by Robert Shelton)
From: Jamie Young <jamiehy@tds.net>
Subject: Aluminum for photo trays
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 08:02:59 -0500
> A friend of mine was asking me about using aluminum trays she found at 
> a restaurant supply store. She wants to use trays that fit her 
> panoramic format photos better to save sink space. My guess was that 
> aluminum would be too reactive to be a good choice, but am not a 
> chemist. She will be doing traditional silver fiber base printing 
> mostly. I wasn't able to give her a good answer other than I would 
> probably avoid it, and definitely not do toning as that would be the 
> place she would she the problems most. What would a person with better 
> chemistry knowledge say about aluminum trays.