Re: B&S Pyrocat-HD Developer...
As for what I did... I heated up about 150-200ml distilled water in the 1000ml beaker and stirred in a bit of the dry components in at a time after heating it on the stove to 50c with a thermometer, after dissolving the entire content of the 500ml bottle, which was maybe 5% full of dry chem, I added a bit more distilled water and stirred until I got to 500ml and then let it sit for 30-40mins and then put it back into the bottle and shaked it to mix in the rest of the dry that was residual in the bottle. I may have a bit less than 500ml in my bottle right now after cooling from 50c but it should be within a few percent of where I should be with the solution A. Solution B was premixed as it has an indefinite shelf life from what i've read...
B/S folks said that solution a is dry so as to keep a good long shelf life and even though it's advertised as a wet kit they keep solution a dry so it doesn't deteriorate over time. They offered to mix it next time if I put some note in the order in the instructions field.
The PF dry kit I bought previously had all the components dry and in separate little baggies. I suppose you could even measure out and mix smaller batches of stock solution a if you wanted from that kit, I was just not equipped with lab ware to mix that in a way that I was comfortable with at the time I received it. I'm perhaps a bit too uptight about how some of this, but I just don't want any chance to mix anything with something used for food at home.
Re: B&S Pyrocat-HD Developer...
Next time I'm going to look at mixing it up in glycol or order the glycol mixed kit.
Re: B&S Pyrocat-HD Developer...
If you are anticipating a long time between days developing film, then glycol is the way to go.
Re: B&S Pyrocat-HD Developer...
I have been using Pyrocat HD (mixed form the 'scratch' chemical components)
in BTZS tubes for both my 4x5 and 8x10 film. After many years of either tray or hangers-in-tank development I have found Pyrocat HD used in tubes to be probably
the least expensive and 'best' developer I have ever used after some 60+ years of large format film development.
Ken
Re: B&S Pyrocat-HD Developer...
It certainly is a great developer in many regards, Ken. It's been my main developer for about 15 years.