Developing b+w in color print tanks?

[Surly]

I tried to search this to no avail, please point me to any thread that may have already discussed this.
I have some nice ss tanks that were used for color print developing. They are for sale and the buyer asked about the chemicals involved. I would assume after a "proper" cleaning there would be no issue. Then again, I have no concept of blix and the like and I'm no chemist. Also, what constitutes a proper cleaning could be debated. I started cleaning everything with Photofinish and it really did a nice job (visually) on the pieces I cleaned. Does anyone have experience with this? There are four tanks that were marked developer, stop, blix, and the fourth was unmarked, I would assume it was for fixer. I would like to know for my own knowledge and to be able to give prospective buyers accurate info. For the record this thread is not a sales tool and yes, the ad is only here on APUG at this time.

Thanks!

 

[pentaxuser]

Not sure my understanding of what constitutes tanks is what you mean. As there are four separate ones ,do you mean dishes/trays? I have film developing tanks that I use for both B&W and colour and I have Jobo drums that I have only used for RA4 paper but as the chems in both cases are washed out each time in the cycle I see no reason why the same reasoning couldn't be applied to paper processing. If a tray/tank has been used exclusively for dev/fix then there are proprietary cleaners which should render them if not clean then uncontaminated by the chemical be it dev or fix.

If there was problem and a dev tank had always to be used for dev then I think the trade on such things on e-bay would have dried up. I have never seen any seller on e-bay saying NB "This tank has always been a dev tank and must not be used for other chems"

pentaxuser

 

[Bob-D659]

How clean does the purchaser want them? There are many ways to really clean ss tanks, and most of them will eat the flesh from your bones(and the bones as well) if you aren't careful. A good soak in a 10 molar NaOH will remove most everything and a second soak with a strong acid will finish the job. This is similar to how they do a "clean in place" of process piping.

Otherwise, a scrubbing pad and a can of abrasive kitchen cleanser like Comet with bleach will bring them to a nice polish, and wear rubber gloves as well.

 

[Surly]

As far as tanks go - the equipment in question is a set of four stainless steel open sided boxes that reside in another stainless box which acts as a water jacket. The four individual tanks have floating lids, indicating the chemistry that lived in them did so for long-ish periods of time. They also have covers that go over the lids. There are two print baskets that I assume were used to transfer the prints from bath to bath as you would with trays. I have a similar set up that I use with 4x5 hangers but without the water jacket. I have always called them tanks but perhaps that's incorrect.
The buyer did not necessarily ask for them to be cleaned but was curious about the compatibility between chemistries. This was really the core of my question and I should have been more clear.

If I have a tank (container) that once contained blix/color dev/stop/fix and I clean it so that it is visibly clean using standard methods (kitchen cleanser, scotch brite, etc..) will I be able to then use b+w developer/stop/fix in that container without damaging my new chemistry or worse causing some reaction that may be damaging to my health.

The fact that there are many things re-sold on ebay that have caused no trouble is an excellent point.

Many people know you don't add water to acid but always add acid to water. I was kind of wondering in the darkroom community if there happened to be an "Oh man, dont ever mix Blix and Dextol!, I thought everyone knew that" sort of thing.

All that being said, I started using Dead Link Removed to clean these tanks along time ago. This product claims to remove all residue, cause no cross contamination, and be completely harmless. It seemed to work great but I have not used the tanks ever.

 

[Bob-D659]

If they are scrubbed clean with no visible stains or residues, you should be fine. If you want, wipe each tank down with the chemical you are going to be using in it and rinse it out.