Developing with a wooden tank

Well my 16mm 100ft monster tank 'works' well enough, hard to load... had all sorts of probs (will put that up later).

I was considering working with wood for my next design, while too late now for my uni project I think.. had a stroke of "genius" that would make a tiny lightweight, easy to load in small spaces tank.. and not such an endeavour to build..

Was wondering if wood would hold some chemicals and contaminate the solution etc? Or if its okay to use as I've seen those wooden rack designs.

Otherwise might go perspex.

There's a way of sealing the wood, it was once quite commonly used in darkrooms surprisingly.

Ian

With a resin?

I'm not 100% sure, I have a war-time (WWII) book on making darkroom & photographic equipment which I need to find to check, but I think it's boat varnish, but first you need to make sure all the joins are well sealed.

Ian

Its more about the joinery used than the finish. A good exterior spar varnish will seal the wood to keep the chems from imbedding in the pores. Choice of wood makes a difference. Quarter sawn white oak(never red oak) has tyloses that naturally plug the pores and is waterproof, reasons for making wine and whiskey barrels from it(hence the wonderful flavor of a well aged whiskey), Mahogany(genuine not "Philipine") has similar qualities. There are other species that will suffice, a little research on your part, but generally if used for boats, okay for tanks.

Athiril said:

I was considering working with wood for my next design,k.. and not such an endeavour to build..
Otherwise might go perspex.

Click to expand...

If you find working with wood easy, you might consider contact cementing on a plastic product & silicone the joints (i.e. aquarium silicone?). White PVC glue makes an excellent cement for laminate on wood if you can keep the pieces under pressure until set (i.e. stuff the crevices with a sock, etc.), not sure about Kydex. We used to use a really low-tack one-side glue with the Kydex on walls, with a similar texture to white glue.

You can choose any wood to build your structure, then use one of these two great easy to work with products are:

Kydex (or equivalent): It is the material you see half way up nearly all hospital hallway walls. It can be cut with kitchen shears/scissors. It usually has a hair-cell finish, but you can reverse it for a smooth finish. It is some type of acrylic-PVC.

Post forming plastic laminate: i.e. commercial fabricators plastic laminate for counter tops. It is much thinner than regular home-store variety as it is suitable for doing the small radius bullnoses on countertops. It can be cut with kitchen shears/scissors. (you might be able to get the size of pieces you want for free from a commercial countertop factory).

Both materials are about 0.020" thick, and really nice to work with fitting into little spaces & trimming to fit with scissors or utility knife.

Industrial construction contractors often use a lot of low viscosity bolt setting/bonding epoxy. I used to buy it in about 9 liter kits in pails, not tubes. A small amount of this would go a long way in making an impervious wood finish, if you could find a contractor to give you something like this. I've also made curved parts by lining a small form with kitchen wrap & putting a really dry mixture of sand dampened with the low viscosity epoxy (a small amount of epoxy goes a LONG way for a non-structural part, then sealed the part later with a coat of the epoxy.

Perhaps fiberglass work, resin might be a good wood finish that would penetrate & seal prior to curing to a chem. resistant finish.

Hope this tweaks your imagination. Thanks for your activity here. I'm learning a lot by watching your activities here, my heads spinning....or perhaps that's just the lack of air in my 3'x4' closet doing my 25 rolls of film from the Paris trip

Thanks guys, here is the intended design, top view:

black circle is solid core for displacement, i find it easier to begin working at a certain diameter than from the center.

pale large circle is the solid base, red circles are holes drilled in it for drainage/placing it into cylinder bath easily.

pale small circles are rods/dowels etc, as many rows as needed, blue line is film taped to the core then wound emulsion side out around the rods.

I calculate with a 20cm core diameter, 0.5cm rod diameter with 0.5cm space between each row, with 8 rods per row, and 2cm fluid height in bath would need 3.3 litres for 100ft, would have a total diameter of 51cm and use 30 rows.

you could make it taller for bigger film gauges, more rows for longer lengths, or stack layers for more length as well.

You can make things out of acrylic with woodworking tools. Then you would not have to worry about waterproofing. A table saw really needs what is called a "triple chip grind" saw blade for good cuts. Drilling can be done with regular bits if very careful (read drill press), but a plastic supplier could sell you a bit that drills well without cracking the plastic.
As long as the film is relatively loose and emulsion out, you should not have a problem.

i've stuck ECN-2 film remjet side in to the inside of a beaker wall and processed evenly and fine, and that was overexposed 1 stop and accidentally overdeveloped.. my massive tank was a bit of a disaster, taking a few min to fill on its own.. and all sorts of other problems..

EG:


There is some dense picture and some areas which are okay on the motion picture strip from the tank.. if I want something 'normal' to show at my presentation, I'll have to build this poste haste.. think I'll just use a wooden base board, drill holes, use small nails for the rods, and build a bath-holder the right size... should be fine for one usage..

Never tried it, but if I were to try to emulate a spiral reel I'd lay two solid core insulated wires spiralling out from centre onto some clear perspex, one with glue on it, one not - once the glue had dried I'd pull the unglued wire up, which up until that point had served as a spacer for the other glued wire ...

Top layer more milled out clear perspex - load as you do a Lomo

I'll give it a go one decade soon :rolleyes: