Best Practice for Divided D-23

What is the best practice for Divided D-23?

After reading various web resources it seems to me that one should use a normal agitation scheme when the film is emerged in the first bath, the 'normal' D-23 developer bath. Time is critical, the longer souped in the first bath, the denser the negatives.

The information gets a bit fuzzy regarding the second bath. There is no definite answer what the second bath should be consist of, how long the film should be in it and, whether or not one should agitate the second bath.

Hence, the question .... what are the best practices for using Divided D-23?

And a second, related, question. If you do not agitate while the film is in the second bath, will develop stop on completion? Or is the second bath, even without agitation, time critical?

Looking forward to your responses!

Marcel

I don't know about "best", but here's what I do:

Part A: 30 seconds first agitation, and 5 seconds every minute afterwards. Most films get 8 to 10 minutes in Bath A.
Part B: 3 minutes total, 5 seconds gentle agitation at first, and with 2 gentle inversions every 30 seconds.

I find that if you do NOT agitate a little bit in Part B, you will get very flat, underdeveloped negs.

Part B can be either Borax or Kodalk.

See: https://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/DD-23/dd-23.html

michael_r said:

Some years ago I did a series of experiments on this (documented somewhere on APUG/Photrio), as there is relatively little in the way of credible literature on certain aspects of divided development of this type.
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While researching divided D-23 like development I more or less came to the same conclusion. Hence my question. Thanks for the input!