Hi Dave;
I ran into a similar problem of ours many moons ago. I had to bite the bullet and go just four sheets per reel, leavin the middle open. In the long run, it was worth it to me.
One good thing however is I always liked HC-110 as a develoepr, an dyou knwo something, I can develop two reels, each loaded with four sheets - so eight sheets of 4x5 total, any B&W film, using just 10 ml of HC-110 concentrate. The way I mix it up, works out to roughly half strenght dil-B. A bottle of HC-110 can go a loooooong ways.
Now the other issue to address is it may NOT be your tanks, but X-tol itself. great developer, but very, very finickity. For exmaple, my local tap water is very hard, and it does not seem to "like" X-tol. Any B&W film, any B&W format, I have to mix X-tol with distilled water, not tap water, or I will have poor results. So check that our, as YMMV.
good luck
joe
Bookmarks