coffee and soda crystals

Murray@uptowngallery · May 20, 2008

Hey, wombats are cool. Most of my family are...

gainer · May 20, 2008

I, too, am on a septic system. The darkroom is on a separate tank. The grass is quite green around its field. I have a great grand daughter who is just old enough to get into things, but does not seem to want to put unfamiliar substances in her mouth. As I write this, I got a call from a high pressure salesman selling stuff to clean the petroleum out of my lines. Imagine that! Something that will clean the oil out of a septic system in West Virginia! When we want to drill a water well, we have to hire a water witch to find one that will bring up water. BTW, there is something to the art of water witching. The distribution of the local gravitational field is influenced by the presence of underground water holes, among other things. Water is more dense than petroleum.

I'm not so sure coffee developer is any safer than catechol after it's been treated with lye, which I cannot buy at any local store.

Ray Heath · May 21, 2008

g'day all, great info, thnx

so, we can replace developer, both film and paper, with coffee and washing soda, can we replace fixer with a common household product?

Ray

removed account4 · May 21, 2008

hi ray

i wish we could!

carmenloofah · May 21, 2008

Thanks all. Has anyone tried to use coffee and soda crystals as a paper developer for lith prints? If so, please can I have a recipe...I'm using Fomatone FB warmtone paper and looking for a colder effect than that resulting from using LD20 paper developer, perhaps Dektol paper developer added too....thank you

Murray Kelly · May 21, 2008

Ray, go down to the local pool shop, as I did, and buy a big 5L container of chlorine lowering compound. It's sodium thiosulphate not the ammonium, unfortunately. They got it in in a few days.

They wanted to know why I needed so much - they thought there'd be enoungh to treat all the pools in Qld.

So, there you go, another source of photo supplies!

Murray
Brisbane, Oz

Ray Heath said:
g'day all, great info, thnx

so, we can replace developer, both film and paper, with coffee and washing soda, can we replace fixer with a common household product?

Ray

Toffle · May 21, 2008

carmenloofah said:
Thanks all. Has anyone tried to use coffee and soda crystals as a paper developer for lith prints? If so, please can I have a recipe...I'm using Fomatone FB warmtone paper and looking for a colder effect than that resulting from using LD20 paper developer, perhaps Dektol paper developer added too....thank you

I have attempted "lith-type" prints with this formula. Tim Rudman tells me that Caffenol does not promote infectious development, though. Caffenol does not work very well with the over-exposure/inspection development technique. I guess, rather than lith printing, you would call Caffenol a staining developer. The results are still quite effective IMHO.

Cheers,

Murray@uptowngallery · May 21, 2008

I didn't like the 2# prices for 'Chlor-Out' sodium thiosulfate, so I kept calling pool places until I got a distributor. They happily ordered me a 25# pail despite being a retail customer...it was cheap too...

Murray Kelly · May 21, 2008

Actually it was pretty cheap compared to having it sent a thousand miles from Melbourne. It was 5 Kg in fact = 11#. I just filled the spaces between the big crystals with water. As it gets down I will see how much isn't disolved (if any) and top it up accordingly.

Next I went to Bunnings hardware garden section and got some ammonium sulphate and just spoon some into the fixer. Just think of it as a mix of ammoniun thiosulphate and sodium sulphate. The film doesn't know any better. Maybe a bit slower than the ATS alone but heaps faster than the STS.

Murray (Down Under)

Murray@uptowngallery said:
I didn't like the 2# prices for 'Chlor-Out' sodium thiosulfate, so I kept calling pool places until I got a distributor. They happily ordered me a 25# pail despite being a retail customer...it was cheap too...

ntenny · May 21, 2008

gainer said:
I'm not so sure coffee developer is any safer than catechol after it's been treated with lye, which I cannot buy at any local store.

Lye? I didn't know anyone had coffee developer recipes with lye. I'm using coffee, washing soda, and ascorbic acid (in proportions that I think originally came from Donald Qualls)---the results are OK, albeit pretty grainy with most films, and I'm pretty confident in the low toxicity of the soup. You *could* ingest enough sodium carbonate to be a problem, but it's hard to see why or how anyone *would*.

The low-contrast "Caffenol LC+C" version really shines, IMHO. (I've been using it with Adox ORT 25.)

-NT

Ray Heath · May 21, 2008

whoa, backup Murray

i must admit i'm no techno/chemo junky

what you posted will make usable fixer?

Ray

Murray Kelly · May 21, 2008

Yup. Folk add ammonium chloride to plain hypo to get the NH4 ions in there - I just used another salt - the sulphate - knowing that NaSO4 is often used to just slow down development on occasion.
Works OK for me!

Murray

Ray Heath said:
whoa, backup Murray

i must admit i'm no techno/chemo junky

what you posted will make usable fixer?

Ray

Murray Kelly · May 22, 2008

My good lady wife tells me we have coffee beans on the tree out back. If I strip off the flesh, then dry out the husks, and split the beans to get the kernels I will have the means to test whether the unroasted product will perform better than 'el cheapo' instant coffee.

Is it possible that in years to come I willl wish I'd experimented more with raw beans than sticking to plain ol' phenidone/metol/pyro ?.

I think not.
Murray

gainer · May 22, 2008

ntenny said:
Lye? I didn't know anyone had coffee developer recipes with lye. I'm using coffee, washing soda, and ascorbic acid (in proportions that I think originally came from Donald Qualls)---the results are OK, albeit pretty grainy with most films, and I'm pretty confident in the low toxicity of the soup. You *could* ingest enough sodium carbonate to be a problem, but it's hard to see why or how anyone *would*.

The low-contrast "Caffenol LC+C" version really shines, IMHO. (I've been using it with Adox ORT 25.)

-NT

I must have been thinking about Tylenol. Anyway, I was not being very serious. However, anyone interested in a litho developer should consider using lye. Hydroquinone requires lye or a concoction of sulfite and acetone that generates very high pH, IIRC.

I have drunk some coffee that seemed to have been seasoned with lye. At least, some have called it "paint remover".

Murray@uptowngallery · May 22, 2008

I was looking for a local source of ammonium chloride. Apparently one can buy it in blocks for solder flux, or as a feed additive for castrated goats suffering from urinary calculus.

Local goat farmers must have thought I was nuts. One just takes his to a vet and the other apparently has breeders.

I guess that is something I'll have to order from PF.

coffee and soda crystals

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