If I were you I'd think twice before mixing chemicals.
If I were you I'd think twice before mixing chemicals.
I was a bartender way back in college -
that was likely more dangerous mixing
One should always think twice-- and prepare your work area well, and take reasonable precautions. But chances are, you're exposed to far more dangerous chemicals when you're cleaning your bathroom.
I don't get this paranoia about mixing photochemistry-- for the most part, you aren't dealing with Instadeath in a jar, or having to carefully monitor temperature levels lest you accidentally add a 4th toluene group.
Depends on the specific chemicals involved. There are quite a number developer formulas which contain potentially hazardous ingredients. D76 isn't one of them; but you still want to wear nitrile gloves to prevent the risk of skin irritation. I'd agree that most people have more dangerous chemicals under their bathroom sink, in their garage, or in a garden sprayer than the typical black and white darkroom does. But that fact doesn't excuse any kind of carelessness with chemicals.
A million years ago I was a Chem & Physics combined major. I remember one of my classmates messing up and causing the lab building to be evacuated when he "forgot" to work under the hood and got a good whiff of Cyanide gas. Fortunately it was a pretty minimal concentration and he recovered, but he hit the floor pretty hard when he passed out. Compared to that the stuff one uses in D-76 etc is rather benign - just don't eat or drink it. Come to think of it, hitting the floor was a good thing since Cyanide is lighter than air so he was in a safer spot. Had another classmate who got impatient when something wouldn't dissolve in room temperature Ether and stuck it over a Bunsen burner to heat it up. He got some nasty facial burns when it ignited in his face. Quite dramatic. There's a moral to this story so I'll sum it up by paraphrasing an expression about pilots. To wit: "There are old chemists and bold chemists, but there are no old bold chemists."
I switched to Computer Science, or as we called it in 1959 "Applied Mathematics".
In High School chem class I was one of the ones who made liquid stink bombs propped in a bucket over the rear second-level entry. These were intended for students; but one day the teacher chased the class dunce around the building to the back, then himself entered by the rear door and got doused with stench. But the next day that same dunce started randomly mixing concentrated chemical regents and dumping them down the drain. The teacher asked him what he had just poured down, then instantly slammed him on the floor away from the sink blast. All the plumbing below and quite a bit of the storage room below was blown up. Both this dunce and the no. 2 class goof-off went only to have their own companies as adults and were quite successful, while the whizz kid who got a CalTech scholarship eventually ended up in prison for income tax evasion; and the math/physics no.2 runner-up ended up as a stoned hippie on welfare. Ya never know.
I use D76 1:1 with T-Max (and Delta and in the past Acros) sheet film exclusively and never had an issue. Maybe it's not published for sheet film due to the developer's "capacity" as it requires using twice the volume of liquid, and therefore requiring larger tanks. And for what it's worth, John Sexton uses D76 @ 1:1 as well.
Sexton was under contract with Kodak from the inception of this particular film, that is, its marketing inception, to promote the combination of TMax and D76. Yes, It's a competent general-purpose developer. But there are good reasons many of us now prefer different developers instead. Diluting 76 1:1 doesn't mean you need larger tanks or greater volume. I would do up to 12 4X5 sheets at a time in a tray containing 500 ml of 1:1 D76. Then I tossed the developer. Tanks never appealed to me, and certainly not re-use of any developer.
Drew, what caused you to move away from D-76 to your staining developers etc.?
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