Washing in a water-scarce environment

[Alick Newman]

I`m setting up a darkroom on a 40 foot catamaran, where fresh water storage is going to be lmited unless and only if I`m moored in a marina, and I don`t plan on doing that often. I would really appreciate any ideas that allow me to archive wash 16 x 12 prints in a minimum amount of water. I remember Ilford suggesting 3 rinses for 35mm in a daylight tank is equivalent to an archive wash. Would the same approach (scaled up) work for prints?

[CG]

During WW2 there was some research on use of salt water for washing as a water conservation measure. If memory serves, always doubtful, it is possible to use seawater for washing, but I am pretty sure the last several rinses need to be in good freshwater.

I'll bet someone here could offer a more reliable account.

C

[Gary Beasley]

You are right, seawater was used to wash negs and prints, this is where the notion of a hypo clearing agent came about, as seawater would clear up the fixer a good bit faster than pure water. And yes, I'd do a few soaks in pure water Ilford style at the end to reduce the salt load.

[Brian Stein]

The ilford washing advice was fairly specific: fill tank, agitate vigorously then let sit for a while (IIRC 30 min); repeat x 2. Not just 3 washes. Given the limited absorption into an emulsion Id think this would work for RC but not paper (Im a cyanotype guy, not a darkroom printer so forgive me if my weak understanding of papers is hereby demonstrated)

[Chris Jones]

Can't help with the water question but setting up a darkroom in a 40 foot cat sounds like a very interesting story to me. I am trying to imagine what it would be like even if my land based darkroom is only 8 feet long by 6 feet wide and 8 feet high and holds a Meopta Opemus 4 and Fujimoto 45M condenser enlarger plus wet bench that can handle up to 16x20 archival prints (20x24 if I get bigger trays) then I start to think power requirements and so forth. Sure, a 40 foot cat has some room but this is still only a small vessel, so my curiosity grows. A Hood 23 may be more of a challenge, I guess?

[Chris Jones]

Oops, I should have added that I use the Ilford method of film washing for both 120 and 4x5, mainly due to wildly varying temperature problems and water quality where I live which could leave undesirable archival damage to soft negatives, much to my dispair. I don't see why this would not scale to your requirements? (Temperature variation causes a sort of soft grain like clumping effect, also not desired.) It seems to me, from reading up on archival print washers, (google helped here) that I should be able to do something similar with archival fibre paper prints, when I get around to that stage. I have yet to test this out in practice... But a 9 litre bucket of good water can easily do 6 or more 4x5 negs, including chemistry in 10x8 trays. (I read 16x20 prints... hence a confusion, sorry, I just got new multifocals.)

[svlindbe]

[QUOTE=Gary Beasley;398687]You are right, seawater was used to wash negs and prints, this is where the notion of a hypo clearing agent came about, as seawater would clear up the fixer a good bit faster than pure water.QUOTE]

Does this mean that it makes sense to use a salt solution (NaCl) as part of the washing process if Hypo Clearing Agent is not available? How much salt per liter of water? Could any of you explain briefly the chemical rationale behind using salt or HCA (how does it work)?

Svein Lindberg

[Gary Beasley]

Seawater has quite a bit more than NaCl in it. Carbonates, sulfates, sulfites, plenty of other ions even though NaCl is the majority. I doubt using salt would help overly much.

[nolindan]

archive wash 16 x 12 prints in a minimum amount of water.

About 4-changes of a wash tray with warm water will remove the fixer: about 1/2 hour per change with a few shuffles/agitations per change. Use hypo clearing agent - Kodak HCA works much better than the liquid 'magic wash' varieties. Check with residual hypo check. This procedure results in zero color change when testing.

Use salt water for washing out the hypo then wash the salt out with 4 successive washes of a few minutes each in fresh water. Pat or squeegee the print dry before and between fresh water rinses. Save the fresh water rinses between use, they should last a long time.

[Alick Newman]

Gentlemen All,

Fantastic. Much very useful info and food for thought and trial in your responses. Clearly a need for some trials will be called for, but for me that`s all part of the fun. Apologies for the delay in response, but I`ve been out and about looking at boats. My previous darkroom measured 42 inches by 28 inches, housed a Durst colour enlarger (a 507??), and on 2 shelves beneath the enlarger separate 16" x 20" trays for dev and fix. Washing prints was done down the hall in our bathroom. The only (really) problem was getting the paper into and out of the trays without creating those tiny little crease marks smack in the most important part of the print.

Thanks you all again.

Alick