[Leica] Can anyone share hard water, high mineral content darkroom experience?

[Bill Pearce]

most home centers sell home RO machines, and they are fairly inexpensive, 
shouldn't be nearly expensive as most of your other stuff, around here about 
$300. They produce well filtered water with lots of bad stuff taken out, and 
as a bonus, you can use them to feed an icemaker in your refrigerator. Can't 
make enough for flowing water in a washer, but if you use water baths, it 
should be good. Great for chemical mixing. I always filled some old milk 
jugs at off times to keep plenty on hand.

-----Original Message----- 
From: George Lottermoser
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2015 2:02 PM
To: Leica Users Group
Subject: Re: [Leica] Can anyone share hard water, high mineral content 
darkroom experience?


On Jun 23, 2015, at 12:54 PM, Lew Schwartz wrote:

> I've never worked in these conditions. We're drawing from our own well,
> probably high calcium & iron in water. I mix my own developers, but have a
> great source of distilled H20. (Run off from the dehumidifier.) My main
> concern is with washing & the fixer. I got hold of some old style calgon.
> How much would I mix in? I plan to wash negs in the ion filtered well 
> water
> with a final soak in the pure H2O plus wetting agent.
>
> I haven't tried any of this yet, but soon ....
>
> Comments? Ideas?

I worked for 25 years with very hard, untreated water, high in minerals, 
calcium and iron, in my darkroom.

I used commercially distilled water to mix all chemistry.
I used double filtration for wash water;
though always did a final distilled water soak, rinse, soak, rinse, drop of 
photoflo in final rinse.

Never let the negatives or prints dry with even filtered hard water on them.

Regards,
George Lottermoser

http://www.imagist.com
http://www.imagist.com/blog
http://www.linkedin.com/in/imagist


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