Re: [Leica] print washer

[Mark Rabiner <mark@rabiner.cncoffice.com>]

"Sal DiMarco,Jr." wrote:
><Snip>  Save your money.
> Cheers,
> Sal

My print washer is the famous Kodak tray siphon Sal is speaking of.
A big Plexiglas thing is conspicuously absent from my darkroom.
And I have sold fiber prints to collectors for in the hundreds of dollars.

In a test of the Plexiglas montsters one of the smarter writers in a Camera 35
at one point left the prints in over night cause he was tired and he didn't
think it would make much difference.
On those prints instead of 006 or 007 residual hypo he got 0006 and 0007
(licenced to kill you twice)
turns out "running through the sprinklers" is not what does the job, print washing-wise.
It's LAYING IN THE POOL!
TIME!
assuming of course no two prints are touching each other.
We always assumed it was a lot of rushing water.
IT's not the motion it's the TIME.
And a good hypo clear.
I use a series of three large trays, the last one with a famous Kodak tray
siphon dumping into the one next to (before)it. 
And the one before that being standing water, the one before that being kodak
hypo clear.
The total time betwixt the three of them is the time the print needs when
properly hype cleared.
But if I get distracted it will get more.
And I ALWAYS get distracted. (the phone reads, I spend 20 mintues picking out a
new CD)

(Turns out if you get all the hypo out it's bad for the print)

And things keep moving in a horizontal direction with no laundry.
When I'm done printing all my prints are in their drier racks.
I don't need to go back except to stick them in their flattening arrangement.
That's my way of getting those things done.
another story in the naked darkroom city
Mark Rabiner