Ilford Reversal Processing

I have some Scala that I need to develop, and have been meaning for a while to mix up the Ilford reversal chemistry that they list on their site.

Reading it in a bit more detail, though, they suggest using either Bromophen at 1:1 or PQ Universal at 1+5.

I've never used either of these developers, but per their equivalency chart Bromophen is equivalent to Dektol, which of course to me is a paper developer. I HAVE used Dektol to develop film, but I've always found it way too "hot" at 1:1 with crazy short developing times, high contrast, and lots of grain. I find that it doesn't usually "tame" until I get it to 1:9 or so, and honestly it's enough trouble that I just leave it in my developing trays.

With that said, they also instruct adding thiosulfate to the working strength developer, which certainly seems to me as though it would change the character of it.

Has anyone used this procedure( http://tables.pirate-photo.fr/documents/Ilford-dev-inversible_NB.pdf ) before?

My best advice to you is practice reversal well before you need it. Scala is not slide film, as any BW film can be reversed. It takes a while to get the drift of what's going on and is different with different brands of film. It is not like standard developing.

Your observations about dektol are correct, but your assumptions are probably wrong. In standard developing, fixer is what removes the unwanted silver. In reversal developing, the 1st developer / bleach combo is what does the removal. This is why in needs to be a strong developer.