Re: ATM Advice on Film Developing Tanks

["Peter John Smith" <pjifl@bigpond.com.au>]

Ken,

> Geez.  That takes me back.  I know they used to have some that the
> spools used to 'walk' the film onto.  I don't know what you mean by
> center loading.  The Patterson's I used, you twisted the top and bottom
> back and forth and the film fed onto the reel from the motion.


I fear that what I call centre loading developing film spools may now go
under a different name so this brief description may be totally superfluous.
If so I apologise for wasted message space.

The first centre loading spool I ever used ( mid 50's) simply had a
stainless strip around the central post with a small hook standing proud
about 3/8 inch and angled back a little.

The film was trimmed to a blunt point first.  This was best about 3/4 inch
wide at the end and tapering back about 1.5 inches on each side.

The film is then cupped in the hand so its effective width is reduced enough
that it can be placed between the spool flanges.  While cupped, it is hooked
onto the centre spike.

Then the pressure on the edges is slightly released and the film is simply
fed in as the spool is rotated.  It is fed in quite fast between thumb and
first finger. As it springs back flat it widens and feeds into the spiral
grooves.  Very fast.  As someone has mentioned, as long as one did not touch
the emulsion, film is quite hardy stuff.

The Paterson ones had a stainless centre pressure clip - the film end was
pushed under this to hold the centre end in place.  While crude, I think the
hook is at least as good.

The most important thing is to be able to trim the film end in the dark so
it has the right taper on each side, - ie symmetric.  This is harder than it
sounds.  If it was not symmetric it would feed in sort of 'cross threaded'.

When my first tank cracked I got a 3 tier Paterson but did a deal with
someone and got rid of the rocker type spools and got the centre loading
ones.  It cost me a bit more which was a strain on a tight student budget.
In the early 70's.

Those were the days.  Kodak sold all the component chemicals for processing.
With about 10 ? items one could make up any developer, bleach, toner, fixer
etc.  Nowadays one has to buy them prepackeged - and take what is
available - which aint much.

Using D8 developer (a Hydroquinone + NaOH extreme contrast developer) on Pan
F printed on F5 paper a 2 inck refractor easily showed granulations on the
sun plus a lot of sunspot detail.  It was experiments like this that were
cheap and easy with the readlily available chemicals which I could afford
while at high school. Some of the big photo shops also always had a table of
cheap outdated paper and rolls of just outdated bulk film which kept costs
down.  Camera shops in those days kept a large range of useful stock.  They
were proper camera shops..........

In those days cut film actually came interleaved with paper which was much
better in a very humid climate.  It also had an index mitre on one corner
for orientation which now seens to be missing.  And one could walk in and
buy off the shelf B4 special contrast plates for Microscopical work  If I
could get these now they would make fine graticules.  They could be cut into
small squares in the dark and made to sorta fit a 35 mm camera back.
Cutting them was interesting.  Had to do it slowly or there were serious
phosphorescent effects in the dark.

OK I gotta stop reminiscing now.  Sorry for the used bandwidth....


Peter Smith.