Tip: Home-made C-41 and RA-4 chemicals

**Ironage** · 30-Aug-2021, 15:33

I have been using the formulas on this website https://www.bonavolta.ch/hobby/en/ph..._chemicals.htm to mix my own chemicals. They work well and have two advantages: They save money, and less chemicals waisted or dumped into the environment. The disadvantages is that it takes a little more time to mix your own. I have developed about 8 rolls of film and burned through a box of 100 8x10 sheets of Fuji Crystal Archive paper with better results than I have had in the past using packaged chemicals.

Check out the website and see if this is for you.

I am using the alternate separate bleach and fix formulas because I couldn't find the bleach used in the blix. The good thing is that I can get a lot more use out of the bleach and I can remove the silver from the fix before dumping it. I use a Silver Magnet to do this. Color chemicals have more silver in them because it is all removed in the final fix and the dyes are left.

Also the big trick that I learned was do not reuse the stop bath, and you do need it or you will get blue stains on the edges of the prints. Fresh stop bath is the ticket.

**Jason Greenberg Motamedi** · 30-Aug-2021, 20:51

What a great resource! Thank you, I always wondered if this could be done from scratch.
Any guidance about replenishment?

**Ironage** · 31-Aug-2021, 03:58

I don’t use replenishment. I use the fixer until a piece of film takes twice as long to clear, the remove the silver and discard. The bleach that may be carried over makes it unusable I think. The developers are one shot use in tanks and drums, but I don’t know about using it in trays.