I am going to attempt to mix my own developers and am looking for advice on buying a darkroom scale.
I am going to attempt to mix my own developers and am looking for advice on buying a darkroom scale.
There's a huge variety of small battery-powered scales of reasonable accuracy available, powered no doubt by the high demand for same from drug dealers.
Check the offerings at Amazon.com
- Leigh
If you believe you can, or you believe you can't... you're right.
I bought mine from amazon about 6 years ago. Does what it should. http://www.amazon.com/My-Weigh-Trito...my+weigh+scale
I've been using this one for years now and it works great. I like the larger scale area better than the small druggie types. http://www.harborfreight.com/digital-scale-95364.html
Take a look at http://www.oldwillknottscales.com/.
-[Another old] Will
After you get comfortable with blending your own, you may decide to go "retro"...
A triple beam balance is a mark of a true chemist of yore:
http://www.sciplus.com/p/2610-G-TRIP...CE-SCALE_50775
No battery, lasts forever, a work of art in itself.
Reinhold
For accuracy I prefer a triple beam scale. For less critical situations, such as mixing paper developer, spoon equivalents work well and save time.
I use an electronic jeweler's scale that I purchased from Old Will Knot many years ago. I purchased it with a calibration weight. It works very well.
Old Will Knot is a great source, because you can compare just about every scale made.
In the darkroom and kitchen, I used to use a Myweigh scale with a capacity of 5kg and precision to 0.1g. When it died after about 8 years of use, I switched to a two-scale approach that's a little less convenient, but more accurate and cheaper. One scale has 7kg capacity and precision to 1.0 gram. The other has around 100g capacity and precision to 0.01g. The small one is great for anything that you measure in small quantities. All the pro pastry chefs I know do it this way ... a high capacity scale and a precise scale. A scale that is both high capacity and precise costs much more than these two combined.
I use them mostly in the kitchen, since my photography workflow has gone digital. The small scale is great for measuring leavening and hydrocolloids and anything else you use in small quantities. In the darkroom it would be ideal for things like benzotriazole and gold chloride.
I don't find a need for anything fancier than an old-school triple-beam Ohaus scale - I don't have to worry about using it on the bed of the sink and simply rinsing off
any stray powder afterwards - but all kinds of things are available from scientific suppliers. Around here the basic variety is referred to as a "dope scale", for obvious reasons.
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