Stop bath & fixer ever go off?

[Gary Tarbert]

Hi , This may sound like a silly question from someone who has developed their own b&w for a long time, but you see i have never let my chemicals get as old as the ones i have now , they would be 5-6 years old any help appriciated . Cheers Gary

[Ken Lee]

Are you referring to the unmixed powders and bottled concentrates ?

[Gary Tarbert]

hi Ken , Bottled concentrates . Cheers Gary

[Oren Grad]

Ilford says that their Ilfostop is good for 5 years in a full, airtight bottle, while unopened bottles of Hypam and Rapid Fixer are good for 2 years.

[Ron McElroy]

I don't know about a prepared stop, but I'm still using some very old glacial acetic to make a stopbath and it works fine.

[Roger Cole]

I actually faced cleaning out my old darkroom and bringing equipment to my new home, after it sat idle for more than ten years. Working strength stuff I had, back at the time, dumped and even filled the bottles with water, so the bottles were fine.

The only concentrate that I think is usable is the Kodak indicator stop bath concentrate which looks and smells like it always has. I had some odorless (citric acid based) indicator stop concentrate which had weird stuff floating in it which looked like globs of cotton. I've no idea what it was, but I didn't try to use it!

[Filmnut]

You could try seeing how quickly the fix will clear a sheet of film at working strength.
Though I feel that the cheapest part of the chain are your chemicals, so, if there's any doubt about, I'd scrap it, and get fresh. No point in having the film go bad due to old fix.
The exception might be the stop, which is acetic acid, and should keep for a very long time.

[Mark Sampson]

Rapid fixer concentrates will sulfurize over a long period of time; a nasty yellow mud precipitates out and sits in the bottom of the bottle. Tells you how much pure sulfur is in there... and that it's past time to toss it. Developers oxidize and turn brown. Dump. Roger, the 'weird stuff' in your old citric acid SB is some type of organic growth, like on that leftover potato salad in the back of the fridge. Happens to hypo clearing agent too.

[Roger Cole]

Rapid fixer concentrates will sulfurize over a long period of time; a nasty yellow mud precipitates out and sits in the bottom of the bottle. Tells you how much pure sulfur is in there... and that it's past time to toss it. Developers oxidize and turn brown. Dump. Roger, the 'weird stuff' in your old citric acid SB is some type of organic growth, like on that leftover potato salad in the back of the fridge. Happens to hypo clearing agent too.

Humm. It's possible it could have been filtered and used, but who knows what it was and how much microscopic material might end up on film and might have an appetite for gelatin? Glad I tossed it, which seemed like the only sensible thing to do.

[Gary Tarbert]

Hi , I thought rather than risk it for $30 2 brand new bottles were aquired , one of the images in the batch to be processed , cost me more than that in fuel to get to the location . Thank you all . Cheers Gary