Amber bottles - IBC Rootbeer 12 oz.?

Shmoo · Jan 27, 2006

I just spent about $30 for 12 - 1 liter amber bottles to store my B&W chems, when it dawned on me (while sipping a diet rootbeer) that the IBC Rootbeer bottles are 12 oz. amber bottles and that they might be reusable. Anybody ever used amber soda bottles? I went and bought some wine bottle stoppers to top them. Just wonderin'...

Neal · Jan 27, 2006

Dear Shmoo,

PET soft drink bottles are cheap and don't break if you drop them (a bit of plastic wrap under the cap is advisable). Use green ones if you prefer but you can always just not leave them out in the sun.

Neal Wydra

jim appleyard · Jan 27, 2006

Some plastic bottles breath. I don't know whether the soda bottles do, but when I worked in the beverage industry, the soda had expiration dates. This may have been just a precaution by the soda industry, the breakdown of sugar/artificial sweetener, the breathability (word?) of the plastic or all of the above.

Glass is best and you can fill up the space at the top with glass marbles to squeeze out even more air.

Ronald Moravec · Jan 27, 2006

I used IBC for a few years with original caps until I purchased a large supply of small bottles. I just got a dozen 1 liters at the same time.

The bottles need not be dark if you store chems in the dark, but there is some debate on whether photo chems are light sensitive. Never experimented, just used dark ones kept in the dark.

Jan Pietrzak · Jan 27, 2006

Shmoo

Did I ever tell you the story about trying to coat a pt/pd print with Scotch. Use the Boston Bottles. It is fun to save money, but at what cost.

Jan Pietrzak

Dan Williams · Jan 27, 2006

Try this place. http://www.specialtybottle.com Large selection - Good prices - Fast delivery - You can buy one bottle or buy by the case.

I have also used www.sciplus.com Really an interesting place. You can get labware and clown noses in one-stop shopping.

Michel Hardy-Vallée · Jan 28, 2006

I've been using 1.18L beer bottles that I get for 10 cents each at my corner store (they're refundable in Québec). They have a screw cap that keeps the gas in (I change it occasionally), and when I want to be extra careful, I blow some dust buster in a partially filled bottle. I just wish I could still find those 1 gallon jug that was used for cheap wine a while ago.

JHannon · Jan 28, 2006

DarkroomDan said:
Try this place. http://www.specialtybottle.com Large selection - Good prices - Fast delivery - You can buy one bottle or buy by the case.

I have also used www.sciplus.com Really an interesting place. You can get labware and clown noses in one-stop shopping.

Thanks for those links Dan. I am a bit nervous storing chemicals in soda bottles with the kids around.. I put skull and crossbones labels on all my darkroom bottles and keep the area locked.

JHannon · Jan 28, 2006

Jan Pietrzak said:
Shmoo

Did I ever tell you the story about trying to coat a pt/pd print with Scotch. Use the Boston Bottles. It is fun to save money, but at what cost.

Jan Pietrzak

Jan, so how did the prints come out?

Jan Pietrzak · Jan 28, 2006

JHannon said:
Jan, so how did the prints come out?

JH,

A HELL of a waist of good scotch, the blacks had no D-max.

Jan Pietrzak

Hows your print frame

Monophoto · Jan 28, 2006

Many years ago, I took a bicycle ride along a major road. I watched the side of the road for discarded brown one-quart beer bottles. They come in two forms - screw top and crown top. Screw top is easy - a standard 28mm bottle cap fits. Crown top is more of a challenge, but speciality culinary shops carry spring stoppers that work for them.

The point - and afternoon of fresh air and exercise, combined with the public service of picking up litter, and I have some good darkroom bottles.

JHannon · Jan 28, 2006

Jan Pietrzak said:
JH,

A HELL of a waist of good scotch, the blacks had no D-max.

LOL!

Jan Pietrzak said:
Hows your print frame

The print frame is a new product from Freestyle (10X12 $99). Made from Alder hardwood. Very well made with a nice hinged back. Looks like quality work. I did a 5X7 contact print and it is so nice to have a decent printing frame. Can't wait for 8X10 contacts!

--John

Flotsam · Jan 28, 2006

It always just made sense to me that if a plastic carbonated beverage bottle could contain carbon dioxide under pressure for weeks, months or years, it should be a pretty good barrier against plain old air.
I either use Green bottles or Clear and store them in a dark place.

Shmoo · Jan 28, 2006

Was this before or after you started on the scotch?

Sharon

Jan Pietrzak said:
Shmoo

Did I ever tell you the story about trying to coat a pt/pd print with Scotch. Use the Boston Bottles. It is fun to save money, but at what cost.

Jan Pietrzak

Jerry Thirsty · Jan 28, 2006

Flotsam said:
It always just made sense to me that if a plastic carbonated beverage bottle could contain carbon dioxide under pressure for weeks, months or years, it should be a pretty good barrier against plain old air.

You are correct. A couple of jobs ago I had to do some gas diffusion testing. The important variables are the absolute viscosity of the gas and the pressure differential between the inside and the outside of the container. The absolute viscosity of air and carbon dioxide are virtually the same, so that's not really a factor. The big difference is that the soda is a pressurized, super-saturated solution of CO2. There usually isn't an appreciable pressure differential between the inside and outside of a bottle of darkroom chemicals. So the air diffusion into the bottle will be a lot slower than the CO2 diffusion out.

I've noticed most of the soda I buy usually has about two months to go until the expiration date. It may have been bottled a month earlier, so if the bottle can hold pressurized CO2 for 3 months, it should be good against ambient air for considerably longer. I've used Xtol that's been stored in (full) soda bottles for up to six months without any problems.

On the other hand, I wouldn't use bottled water bottles. The bottle itself may be the same, but they don't have the soft rubber seal in the cap that really seals the soda tight.

Jerry

Flotsam · Jan 28, 2006

Jerry Thirsty said:
I've noticed most of the soda I buy usually has about two months to go until the expiration date. It may have been bottled a month earlier, so if the bottle can hold pressurized CO2 for 3 months, it should be good against ambient air for considerably longer.

I am sure that I have had seltzer in plastic bottles laying around unopened for way longer than a few months with no noticable loss of carbonation.

srs5694 · Jan 28, 2006

I use the IBC 32-oz bottles, which include screw-on caps, to store large quantities of chemicals. (I put my working print developer, stop bath, and fixer in them, for instance.) So far I've had no problems I can trace to the bottles, but I've only been doing this for a few months.

For those interested in plastic bottles, Ryuji Suzuki has a Web page on the topic:

http://silvergrain.org/Photo-Tech/plastic.html

To sum up: PET (#1) bottles are best for developers and other oxygen-sensitive materials, but HDPE (#2) bottles are bad for this purpose. Soda bottles are usually PET, whereas milk bottles are usually #2. Bottled water can come in either type of plastic. PET is less acid-resistant than HDPE, so HDPE is better for stop baths. Other plastic types can also be good choices; see the page for details.

Note that most of the collapsible (accordion-style) bottles available from photo retailers are made of HDPE plastic. There's a page somewhere on developer storage that tested these bottles and found that they resulted in reduced storage life, even when they were collapsed to minimize air in the bottles.

BWGirl · Jan 28, 2006

DarkroomDan said:
Try this place. http://www.specialtybottle.com Large selection - Good prices - Fast delivery - You can buy one bottle or buy by the case.

I have also used www.sciplus.com Really an interesting place. You can get labware and clown noses in one-stop shopping.

Well I wish I would have had this link before Christmas! I made Vanilla Extract and ended up putting them in "cough medicine-type" bottles from the pharmacy! Complete with child-proof caps, no less. :rolleyes:

Dan Williams · Jan 28, 2006

BWGirl said:
Well I wish I would have had this link before Christmas! I made Vanilla Extract and ended up putting them in "cough medicine-type" bottles from the pharmacy! Complete with child-proof caps, no less. :rolleyes:

Funny you should mention Vanilla extract. I bought ten 4 oz brown bottles with caps from sciplus and from the engraving on the bottle is Vanilla.

They often sell quantities of 10 of things. I got 10 graduated 2ml droppers from them as well as a batch of 5ml bottles with dropper caps. Bookmark their page or order the catalog.
Besides the useful stuff, they carry a lot of fun and strange items. The catalog is a hoot.

BWGirl · Jan 28, 2006

We have an American Science & Surplus Store in Milwaukee. The place is a riot! I had to literally drag my hubby out of there to prevent him from buying a glass urinal to use as a wine decanter. :rolleyes: I told him... "I don't care how much surface area it provides...there is no way in h***!" haha

Amber bottles - IBC Rootbeer 12 oz.?

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