Anyone running a hand-line for B&W film dev?

[noeyedear]

When I was at college we had a hand-line of D76, which was maintained and replenished when the densitometer said it needed replenishment.
The first place I worked had a hand-line to, it was three 120 length ceramic containers, one dev one fix and one wash all standing in a sink. The dev was microphen I recall. The dev had a heater in the top, when it got to 25 degrees C, it was switched off and stirred with a wooden broom handle that over the years dissolved in the dev, the replenishment was done by eye. I mean when a certain amount of dev had carried over and evaporated, replenisher was added to keep the level up. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but the system never failed, if it did it was always down to operator error, not bad dev or wood fibres clinging to the film.
So I'm wondering, I have tanks, racks and spirals I acquired from a colour hand-line many years ago, will I be making more trouble for myself trying to maintain a hand-line with only a handful of films per month. Anyone running a hand-line successfully with home through put?

Kevin.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

I've kept a handline with Acufine or with a homebrew Acufine substitute for some years. If I'm processing enough in Acufine (I also use ABC Pyro, PMK, and sometimes other things, depending on what I want to do), then I've kept it replenished. Otherwise I keep track of the number of rolls and dump it when it gets too old, has too much film run through it, or crashes due to high heat. The latter tends to happen when we're on vacation and the air conditioning has been off during the summer, so I always test with an exposed film clip to be sure the developer is still active, if I haven't used it for a while.

 

[Ian Grant]

Kevin, I've been replenishing devs for 40+ years, I stopped using deep tanks when my usage dropped in the late 1980's and ever since I've used a 2.5 litre bottle for my working solution and then Paterson & Jobo dev tanks for my films up to 5x4.

Ian