[Leica] Ups and downs of stop baths?

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Adam Bridge asked:
Subject: [Leica] Ups and downs of stop baths?


> So I've gotten this general impression that a substantial number of
> folks aren't fans of stop baths for black and white negative film and
> just slosh around water in its place which.
>
> So what's the thinking here? The stop bath gets in the way of fixing
> later? Has some bad effect on film grain? I would assume that it would
> be a good thing to quickly stop the development process.<<<

Hi Adam,
I'm probably going to scare the pants off some folks and leave others 
shaking their heads at the old guy once again about technique. :-)

I haven't used stop bath for film in years! Yep, did at one time long long 
ago in a darkroom far far away! ;-)

Developing: During the last couple of minutes the lights are off and stay 
off until the fix has been well agitated and lid returned.

As soon as dev, time is up the lid is off and developer dumped, swoosh gone! 
The "FIXER" is poured right in the open top of the tank as quickly as 
possible until full. The reel rod is taken firmly in fingers and a vigorous 
plunging up and down of reels for about 30 seconds. The lid goes on tank and 
removed every thirty seconds or so for another vigorous plunging, repeated 
each 30 seconds for 3 minutes while using Rapidfix.

And that's the system, 2 rolls or 12! Works quickly and cleanly without 
little pin holes or other thingies. Oh you might exhaust the fixer a little 
quicker, so what!

After 3 minutes with this agitation, the fixer is returned to bottle. Then 
rolls are flushed with clean running water at 70 degrees with a plunging for 
a couple of minutes.  This clears away any fix left on the film and in tank. 
Then add a few drops of Hypo Eliminator to the full tank of water. Add 
vigorously plunging for about 2 minutes.

Then turn on running water at 70 degrees and wash for 5 minutes even though 
the Hypo Eliminator directions say you only need to wash for a couple of 
minutes. Better to be safe than sorry.

To finish up before drying, a couple of miniscule drops of Photoflo in full 
tank of water, reels up and down a couple of times, dump solution and plunge 
reels into a clean tank of 70 degree water and out! Once! Quickly!

When drying. Never, ever, ever use a squeegee nor your fingers as squeegee, 
if you do scratch disaster awaits you! Yes I know of people who've used 
their fingers for years and never had a scratch! So what, as all that means 
is they are damn lucky and should immediately buy a lottery ticket for 
millions! DO NOT DO IT! PERIOD!

This is how to do it with nary a mark on the film! Nada!

Hold reel firmly between your middle finger and thumb, then with a few good 
snaps of your wrist toward the floor it snaps the liquid off!  Carefully 
remove film and hang in the drier with weighted clip on the bottom!

That's it! :-)

No water marks, no scratches, no nothing but nice clean shiny dry film 
waiting to be printed !
I knew you'd like the method used for, "Oh lets say 5-10,000 rolls or more." 
;-)
ted