Before I start- I'm posting this in the hopes that another person that is new to the Jobo won't screw up like I did. I also want to say that I screwed up. The Jobo didn't, more specifically the lift didn't. I got my CPP2 late last year but today was my first opportunity to use it.
The old style lift on the Jobo has a lever for selecting the upper or lower chemical wash outlet. Upper for 3000 series tanks. Lower for 2000 series tanks. The manual notes that it can be difficult to switch. That's true. I didn't check the position of the switch before I started. That was a mistake.
I was supposed to be developing 6 sheets or Delta 100 with Rollo Pyro (also the first time) in a 3006 tank therefore I needed to select the upper setting. The tank mounted fine (I thought) and I never gave the selector a thought.
I had plenty of other warnings something wasn't right. It just didn't click until I had ruined 6 sheets of film. Six sheets that took over 3,000 miles of driving to expose. On the up side, I was traveling for work so I'm not out anything but wounded pride and 6 sheets of film. And the images... that's the part that makes me sick...
Warnings:
(1) When I dumped the first Sodium Metaborate wash it didn't look like 250ml and there was no color. That should have stopped me in my tracks
(2) When I dumped the developer... no color and definitely not looking like 500mlBy this point I was going over how I mixed everything and what I could've done wrong. But I didn't stop.
(3) I did two quick rinses and got some color but "staining developer" kept running through my mind. Something was wrong. By this point I had resigned myself to finishing and was pretty sure that I had screwed up the chemical mixture (Bostic and Sullivan kit... that's hard to screw up).
(4) Fix... a light purple color came out on the dump. Same with the first couple of rinses.
(5) During the archival washes, not sure which step but well into it, I noticed brown fluid on the counter. I checked the overflow and the little cup that I put under it to catch drips was full of brown fluid and it was running everywhere. Ding... the light came on. I had a Jobo full of diluted pyro dumping out on my counter.
I managed to stop the flow before it got too bad. I thought about how many times I have read how dangerous Pyro is and all of the safety precautions that must be taken. I removed my gloves after the second Sodium Metaborate rinse and didn't put them on to clean up until well into the process. The Jobo had about 6 gallons of clean water in it so the solutions were diluted but that doesn't make me feel any better. Hopefully I won't have a pair of blue dragon wings growing out of my forehead in the morning.
With the switch (old style lifts have a switch, new style has a plug) in between settings everything that I poured into the Jobo split between the water bath (lower connection) and the tank. Maybe 100ml out of 250 made it to the tank. The negs all have a ghost of an image on them but they are basically trash. Three are from Shiloh Battlefield National Monument and three from The Great Smokey Mountain National Park. I still have three sheets of Acros from the Smokies. Once I regroup and get past my stupidity I'll try to find some developing info for Acros in Rollo Pyro and try again...
I hope this helps someone. I sure won't make this mistake again.
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