Quote Originally Posted by al olson View Post
Wow, Thomas, this is very good to know, but I don't do enough processing to use the five gallon quantities. And two hundred fifty dollars for 12.5 gallons of bleach would be outside of my entire color budget for the year. For me that is a lifetime supply. In fact buying chemicals by the five gallon lot would be extreme as I only use 5 to 10 liters each of C-41 and RA-4 during the year.
Yes, 5 gallons of Flexicolor developer replenisher does go a long way but the good news is that the cost is low, $33.99 is what I paid the local Calumet for the kit I am currently working out of, and it lasts for quite a while after opening without having to fill the containers with marbles or gas. For example I first opened the kit I am still using on 1/1/2011 (I write the date on the box and erred when I said May in the earlier post) and as of today there has been no change in the color of any of the components. I think that it's Part C that will oxide first and change to a dark color telling you that it needs to be tossed. But I generally use the kit long before that happens.

As for the bleach, $250 was also out of my bleach budget at the time. But the thought of paying $40 for less than a gallon motivated me to scrape up enough funds for the purchase. But that is now out of the way and I now have enough bleach to last a lifetime. I mix one gallon of working tank solution with starter at a time and use it in the same manner as I did using the ready mixed product. Kodak says that a given quantity will process twice the number of rolls/sheet as the developer so if my run requires 1L of developer, I'll just pour out 500mL of bleach and toss after processing.

Thomas