Confounded by Kodalith

Hello all. I came into possession of a few bulk rolls of mystery EK film when an eBay seller threw them in alongside a separate purchase. He said he did not know what the cans contained; I received them without boxes or printed seals. I decided to check for edge markings and base fog, so I opened the can in question inside a changing bag and cut about eight inches from the roll. Development (in darkness) in Dektol 1:3 for 3 minutes yielded an opaque negative. The scrap did, however, have the emulsion number punched in (6556-127-40) which Rochester confirmed was Kodalith Ortho, Type 3.

Last night I had a bit of down time in the darkroom, so I cut a second scrap under red safelight, deliberately fogged it with exposure to white light, and developed it in straight Dektol (the most powerful liquid developer I have) for 5 minutes. My negative was again completely opaque.

If I'm not making a technical error somewhere in the process, my only guess is that the can was opened under white light at some point and the entire roll was fogged.

Um -- the parts exposed to light should be opaque. Is the opaque part black or milky -- did you run it through fixer? Kodalith is an extremely high contrast film used for line copy 'back in the day".

Here: http://www.kpgraphics.com/service_support/downloads/support/online/ortho/ti/ti1105.pdf

Did you develope only, or did you run it through fixer when you were finished? Sounds as though you didn't fix.

dangeresque said:

o I cut a second scrap under red safelight, deliberately fogged it with exposure to white light, and developed it in straight Dektol (the most powerful liquid developer I have) for 5 minutes. My negative was again completely opaque.

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Er if you "deliberately fogged it with exposure to white light" then it would develop to be completely opaque. Am I missing something here?

Try developing some in standard strength print developer, I used to make black and white transparencies by copying negatives on to 35mm lith and processing in print developer.

DWThomas said:

Um -- the parts exposed to light should be opaque. Is the opaque part black or milky -- did you run it through fixer? Kodalith is an extremely high contrast film used for line copy 'back in the day".

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ralnphot said:

Did you develope only, or did you run it through fixer when you were finished? Sounds as though you didn't fix.

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Yes, I used rapid fixer, 2 minutes in each bath.

yellowcatt said:

Er if you "deliberately fogged it with exposure to white light" then it would develop to be completely opaque. Am I missing something here?

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I took one piece which I did expose (expecting it to be black) and one which I did not (which should be clear, save for fog). Both were completely black.

Given that additional info, I'd say it doesn't bode well. As I recall, it was quite slow as film goes maybe around 6 or 10, and was OK with a red safelight; pretty much like using paper. I used to buy it in 8x10 sheets to make negatives (or positives) to produce photo-etched PC boards and such (a few decades back).

Such was my fear. Back into the freezer...