Diluting HC110.

[patrick_gainer]

Those of you who are partial to highly diluted HC110 may want to try

diluting the syrup 1+3 with propylene glycol instead of water to form

a diluted stock that is easier to measure than the syrup when making

the working solution, but has the long shelf life of the syrup. 40 ml

of this dilution will contain 10 ml of concentrate, enough to make 640

ml of dilution H or 320 ml of dilution B.

[scott_eaton]

They make plastic beakers for a couple of bucks that allow accurate measuring of fluids to 1ml. When I use HC110, I just pour out .5 oz from the straight bottle of syrup and add it to 16oz of water. Instant dilution B.

 

Seems like a lot of extra work to avoid spending $2.95 on a plastic graduate.

[jordan_w.]

Thanks for the tip, Patrick. I would expect that cutting the HC-110 stock with propylene glycol would make it significantly less viscous, making it pour more easily (and settle into the graduated cylinder, rather than clinging to the sides).

[robert_mccolloch1]

I use veterinarian syringes to measure my HC110 concentrate.

[patrick_gainer]

When you get above dilution B and are making only enough to fill a 250 ml tank, the measurements are going to be less consistent going directly from the concentrate than from a weaker stock solution, no matter what you use for the measuring. If you're happy with the way you are doing it now, by all means keep it up. HC110 and propylene glycol will mix easilly without heating and it may obtained from www.chemistrystore.com for less than $16 per gallon plus shipping, no hazmat charge. There are many other uses for ir in the darkroom.

[dean_williams]

Another good idea from a guy who seems to have an abundance of them. Thanks Patrick!

[silent1]

<i>They make plastic beakers for a couple of bucks that allow accurate measuring of fluids to 1ml. When I use HC110, I just pour out .5 oz from the straight bottle of syrup and add it to 16oz of water. Instant dilution B.</i><p>

 

Scott, that works fine when you're dealing with a pint of working solution -- and Dilution B isn't "highly diluted HC-110" in any case -- but when I'm making up two ounces at Dilution G for microfilm in the tank I made for Minolta 16, I'd need to measure about half a milliliter of syrup. I can read that from my smaller syringe, but there's about 15% of that amount variation just in what stays or doesn't stay in the syringe's delivery tube, even if I don't have to use an extension tube to get the last of the syrup from the bottom of the bottle. I've made up a small bottle of stock solution, but four ounces of stock is probably a year's supply at the rate I use it (I use stock solution only for this purpose, everything else I dilute from syrup using the syringe for measurement in amounts of 1.5 ml or more), and the stock only keeps for a few months.<p>

 

I might have to grab some propylene glycol -- though I'll also have to get some more of the little 4 ounce juice bottles I've been using for the syrup, since I'll have four times as much now.

[tonghang_zhou]

Patrick, this seems to have come out of the blue, what an interesting idea! Have you tried it, say in dil-B? Any difference in developing properties?

[lex_jenkins]

When I had younger, steadier hands I'd have agreed with Scott. Nowadays I can barely lift a shot glass of whiskey without dribbling half of it all over my beard. Trying to pour precise amounts of HC-110 syrup into my smallest graduate provokes me to bouts of spitting and cussing.

 

The medication-administering syringes available in the infant's department at grocery stores and pharmacies work very well for accurately measuring HC-110 syrup.

 

But Patrick's suggestion is a useful one, among many from his dark lair of photographic alchemy.

[tonghang_zhou]

Just checked <a href="http://www.chemistrystore.com/propylene_glycol.htm">chemistrystore</a>, shipping a gallon of it costs as much as the product itself. Anyone knows what kind of local stores might have the same?

[david_grasby]

This may be a silly question, but can someone tell me if it possible to use propylene glycol with powder developers such as Xtol or D76? Foe example, if you are mixing up a 3.8 litre batch of D76, could you mix it up using half the quantity of water (using distilled or de-ionized water) and the other half using propylene glycol?

 

Obviously you couldn't then use the formula at full-strength, but would have to dilute it.

 

If it is possible, would there be any benefit to be gained in terms of the keeping quality or shelf-life of the mixed Xtol or D76.

[patrick_gainer]

I'm pretty sure you would not be able to dissolve Xtol or D-76 in any of the glycols. HC110 is specifically designed to be soluble in organic solvents. It is a PQ type of developer, but its alkali is diethanolamine and its sulfite is in the form of an organic sulfur dioxide complex. The massive quantities of sodium sulfite in either Xtol or D-76 would certainly not dissolve in small enough amounts of glycol to make a concentrate, and without water, the working solution would not work.

 

If you mix your own, there are various ways of making concentrated solutions of developing agents in glycol to be used in two part developers with sulfite and any other water soluble ingredients you might want in a second solution. See my article in Photo Techniques "The Role of Antifreeze in Photographic Science."

[patrick_gainer]

By the way, Donald, why go to the trouble of splitting HC110 into smaller bottles? In concentrated form, it will not develop film, and is also not subject to aerial oxidation, at least not in my remaining lifespan. Diluting it with glycol does not change that. Prune juice comes in 1/2 gallon jugs that are very handy, and the contents are a practical necessity at my age. Of course, at 8 ml or so a whack, it might take you 30 years to use up half a gallon. Well, maybe not. That's only about 240 doses.

[jordan_w.]

Tonghang, propylene glycol is used as a type of antifreeze in brewing processes so you might call around to see if there is a brewer's supply store that will sell it to you. Otherwise, there is a brand of car antifreeze called Sierra (IIRC) that is based on propylene glycol rather than the conventional ethylene glycol. It certainly will have other things in it (surfactants, dyes, etc.) but IIRC Patrick has used it successfully.

[patrick_gainer]

Donald,

 

I forgot to check your post. At 0.5 ml of syrup per whack, that's about 960 doses per half gallon of stock. Maybe it will outlive me.

[patrick_gainer]

Speaking of antifreeze, you could just as well use ethylene glycol. HC110 already has that in it, so you wouldn't be adding to its toxicity. That means automobile antifreeze of any sort will work. For that matter, so will brake fluid. Now i'm sure you think I'm in my dotage, as they used to say, but I'm not really suffering from Altzheimer's.

[patrick_gainer]

I did try the glycol stock 1+7 with water, which is dilution B, and it works very well. I developed FP4+ for 7 minutes at 70F. I haven't done the H&D curves yet, but a print of my test scene looks very good.

[silent1]

<i>By the way, Donald, why go to the trouble of splitting HC110 into smaller bottles? In concentrated form, it will not develop film, and is also not subject to aerial oxidation, at least not in my remaining lifespan.</i><p>

 

Two reasons. First, I've noted in the small bottles that drops left on the side of the bottle do in fact oxidize (I presume that's what's happening when they turn brown), so the same thing must happen, albeit much more slowly, to the bulk of concentrate; also, when I divided it, I wasn't sure how fast I'd use it, and didn't want a half full bottle of concentrate turning over on me two years down the road (this was also before I'd learned the keeping qualities were many times what Kodak suggests).<p>

 

Second, however, and much more practical regardless of the longevity of the concentrate, is that it's much easier to measure accurately from the small bottles with a syringe -- my 6 ml syringe will reach into a bottom corner of the 4 oz juice bottles and extract the last usable drop of syrup, where I'd need my 35 ml syringe and an extension tube to reach into the extreme base of the original bottle; I'd waste more syrup left in the tube than I'd use, and the volume of the tube is 2-3 times what I'm using when using a couple ounces of Dilution G, so my dilutions would be all over the place as well.<p>

 

As a bonus, four ounces of stock solution is enough to develop microfilm for as long as the stock solution is likely to last, and I can measure the stock more accurately (both because errors are diluted, so to speak, to one quarter magnitude, and because less hangs in the syringe with the lowered viscosity). So, the first bottle I emptied got refilled with stock solution, and I use that to make up Dilution G for microfilm (when I'm making 16 or 32 ounces for 120, I still measure syrup -- 4 or 8 ml of syrup I can measure accurately enough).

[patrick_gainer]

Donald,

 

I'm sure you know that I was having a little fun. I know why you use the small bottles. I, too have noticed the brown residue in the bottle, and tend to attribute it to moisture taken from the air allowing the syrup to ionize. You see the same thing with Rodinal.

 

I prefer the hypodermic-like syringes you can get at most drugstores. They come with a stopper that is stepped to fit a wide range of bottle mouths. I leave the syringe in the stopper between uses as a secondary stopper. With this syringe, you turn the bottle upside down, suck out what you need, squirt it in the solution, and replace the syringe. It is thus dedicated to that bottle of developer. Even with the small bottles, it is handy. For one thing, the liquid is squeegeed out of the syringe without rinsing.

[patrick_gainer]

The next dilution technique will be to use a solution of ascorbic acid in triethanolamine to make the HC110 diluted stock.

[patrick_gainer]

Add 32 grams of ascorbic or erythorbic (isoascorbic) acid to 750 ml of triethanolamine and heat until it dissolves. Add 250 ml of HC110 concentrate to make 1 liter of a stock solution. It is pretty "hot" at 1+50. Try 7 or 8 minutes at 70 F for HP5+.