Sudden (and not so ) Pyrocat HD Failure

[Ed K.]

Greets Sandy! I for one, pour into a small graduate, so it wouldn't be contamination here, especially since it worked fine the first three times. And above, I asked PF to respond here with any other ideas they may have. Do you have any other ideas?

[Ken Lee]

Could the problem have anything to do with Solution B, which might settle and come out of solution ? Is it imperative to stir-up Solution B before pouring, to avoid this ?

[sanking]

Ken,

"Could the problem have anything to do with Solution B, which might settle and come out of solution ? Is it imperative to stir-up Solution B before pouring, to avoid this ?"

I have never seen potassium carbonate settle out to any appreciable extent in the B solution, certainly not enough to cause devleoper failure. However, there is nothing wrong with stirring or shaking the bottle of B solution before using it.

But I will say this again. There is nothing in the Stock A and Stock B solutions that should lead to early developer failure. In fact, the stock solutions are very long-lived and have been good in my work for well over a year.

[robert_4927]

Sandy, I try and always practice good darkroom etiquette. I always wash and dry and put away my lab glass. Then always before mixing I rinse again and dry. When I mixed the PF wd2d+ I just cut the top off the A solution pack and dumped it in 800ml of 125 degree water. No utensils touched the water or the chemicals prior to the dry power from the A pack being mixed with distilled water. This immediately turned a deep dark orange instead of the clear ( with a slight yellow tinge to it) color. This would be how the developer would act if you would mix the A and B solutions, only darker. Wouldn't you think that when they were mixing they got the sodium carbonate right in solution B (checked the B with some good A and it is fine) but also used it in place of the sodium sulfite in solution A? Or it may be safer to say they accidently mixed up the carbonate with the sulfite. So they got the B solution right. Normally I've had no problems with PF's chemicals. Now I've got two kits like this so all kinds of B solution but no A. I've ordered bulk and will mix my own now, especially since I'm working in ULF and using a little more volume.

[Bob Younger]

I have used the same two bottles of stock solution for 6 months now, in the same black plastic bottles they came in. No problems. However, I did discover a problem with a previous set of bottles, and thereby discovered another place contamination (not mentioned in this thread so far) can occur. If you use the same graduated cylinder to measure both solutions, and touch the edge of the bottle on the graduate, you've probably just contaminated the second solution. I now use two graduates to mix a batch of developer and have had no problems since.

The other thing to watch if both solutions are in the same kind of bottle is to not mix up the lids/stoppers; in other words, put the lid or stopper back on the solution (A or B) before opening the other solution. The folks at PF told me about this one.

I'm with Sandy on this. Other than contamination I've had zero problems with the PF products, liquid or solid. And the folks who work there are genuine in their concern for our success with their products.

[Bud Wilson/Photographers Formulary]

Thank you Ed Keck for contacting us about this thread and our products. Having been asked to respond I will do so with some very basic info that you all can use to draw your own conclusions.

Our batches of liquid chemistry are made in such quantity that we feel we are sending out fresh liquid chemistry to all of our customers not just the ones that happen to order theirs on the day after we happen to mix a batch. That said if we make up a batch of developer thats bottles in to say 100 kits, and that batch of chemistry is bad or non functional, how many of the customers are going to call us? I can assure you that if 100 kits hit the darkrooms of America that I will know about it and if those 100 kits are bad you and all folks that read this and other forums will know about it. But as stated here in this thread the failure of Photographers Formulary packaged mixes has been documented.
The Photographers Formulary has been in business for 28 years and we are proud of the reputation we have in the photography market. If the failure of Photographers Formulary packaged mixes has been documented in that time I appreciate all of the fine photographers that have just given us our best year ever and apologize to all of them for the failed products that they have had to endure. And as with all of our customers for 28 years , we hereby offer to replace or refund any product you got from us that you weren't happy with. That is our policy and always has been.

As to what the problems are that you folks are talking about here? I surely can't say anything more than has been said in this and all of the other threads ever posted about chemistry problems on the net. You folks have an extremely valuable resource available to you as exhibited in this thread by Sandy King and all of the others that respopnd to the endless questions about endless subjects putting all of the worlds info at the finger tips of anyone who wants to hit the search button. Listen to them.

When 2,3,or 4 people have a problem with a batch of Pyrocat HD and when the Formulary made that batch it bottled out at 100 kits that being a 2 bottle product, I am very open as to what to tell those 2,3,or 4 people as to how to help them get thru there particular situation, most of the times the problem is not even the same. Do you use distilled water? We do all of our products in distilled water. Is that all that you use in the Darkroom? Can you smell chlorine in your water supply? If you can do you use it to mix chemicals? Do you scrub all of your trays, beakers, cylinders, sinks counter tops, etc. or just rinse and wipe down? How accurate is you temperature control? This list can go on and on. People like Sandy King give week long workshops at our place in Montana going over and over the little tiny nuance's of a very specific process and share with all the knowledge that has taken decades to accumulate and become proficient at. This is chemistry not rocket science. Change a variable 2-3% and something is going to look different?

I have a tendency to ramble but not often do I take the chance. We at the Formulary are here to help but we are not wizards. The wizards are available on line. We try to help and put out quality products. If you have a problem tell us. If we don't help THEN tell the world. We are available Mon-Fri 8-4;30 MST, you can call me @800-922-5255, e-mail formulary@blackfoot.net

We try very diligently to track and follow possible problems in the mixing and packaging of our products. We appreciate the opportunity you have given us here today. If you have any suggestions on ways to improve our products and or service please advise us.

Bud Wilson

[Andre Noble]

I use distilled H2O for my pyrocat, which worked fine the night before. So I'm letting Photographer's Formulary off the hook. I can think of two possible contaminations due to my error -

1) rinsing the 2 pipets (I use to draw the 5ml of A&B) in the same beaker of hot, tap water.

2) Not clearing tank well enough of ifxer residue.

I didn't want to spell these out in initial post, hoping that someone else solved their Pyrocat HD problems this way. The developer IS very delicate.

I had a two year old opened bottle of Formulary's Wimberly Pyro that still works (somewhat).

Mr. Wilson, your post is reasurring. I will defintiely be buying more Pyrocat from Photographer's Formul;ary , but I wanted to get technique info here to "clean my own house first"

[sanking]

"I didn't want to spell these out in initial post, hoping that someone else solved their Pyrocat HD problems this way. The developer IS very delicate. "

I have used all of the two-part Pyro formulas, including ABC Pyro, WD2D, PMK, Rollo Pyro. They are all delicate to the extent that contamination of the A solution with even a minute quantity of B will seriously degrade th solution in a very short period of time. This is also true of none-staining two-part formulas. In my expereince Pyrocat-HD is no more nor more less delicate than other two-part developers when it comes to contamination.

In addition to contamination, which should be evident because by the time the developer stock solution is degraded there should be some change in color, another mistake many people make is to fail to mix both Stock A and B into the working solution. If you make a mistake and add two parts of A or two parts of B into the working solution, instead of one part of A and one part of B, there will be no developer action.

Also, when mixing two-part Pyro formulas, Part A and Part B should be added to the water, not mixed together first and then added to the water.

Finally, all Pyro staining developers are very sensitive to water supply, which may lead to an increase in general fog, or B+F stain. I don't belive this is an issue in the present discussion but I mention it just in case some may be getting higher genreal stain than they want.