Thanks vic. I've been trying real hard to get good blacks. I tend to do images with a lot of dark areas so it's important to me. Yes, I built the darkbox myself and I posted some pics over on in the alt process forum here at apug pg.18 of the thread 'wet plate collodion questions'
http://www.apug.org/forums/forum42/43412-wet-plate-collodion-questions-18.html