DIY Print washer for waterless darkroom

[ratmandu]

I've been setting up a darkroom in a weird attic space in my new home. This room does not have running water or drainage, so any water that comes in or goes out, goes in buckets.

I've been thinking of a way to wash my prints in this space. I had a wash tray that was supposed to be hooked up to a faucet, as well as a large rubbermaid tub (used for storing assorted stuff, this one had christmas decorations in it). I cut a hole in one side of the lid, for water to drain back down into the bucket from the tray, as well as a small hole for the water line to the tray.

I hooked the water line to a small submersible pump that i've had for circulating water in a tempering bath for C-41 dev (was purchased at walmart in the pet section). The pump has enough power to push the water up to the tray (look for HMax on the pump), and enough flow to fill the tray up to the second set of holes in the end of the tray, and stay there.

I've filled the tub with about 8 gallons of water (I've got two 5 gallon buckets that I fill with about 4 gallons so I don't slosh water all up and down the hallway). After 10 prints or so, I replace about half the water using a secondary pump which is a bit more powerful and much faster than the first.

Before putting a print in the washer, I have a tray holding about a gallon of water that I rinse with first, to get most of the most concentrated fixer out. When I replace the water in the tub, I replace the water in the rinse tray with some of the water in the tub.

I haven't had a chance to run a test to make sure the residual fixer is gone yet, but I will do that soon. If anyone has any thoughts or opinions, or any suggestions on improvements, let me know. In the mean time, I wanted to share this with anyone else who might not have running water in their darkroom, and has about $15 to spend on a part washer.

Anyway, here's some pictures

 

[mshchem]

That looks pretty darn good ! You're absolutely correct to rinse the prints first . In fact I would use several small volume rinses before putting in your washer . 3 or 4 1 minute washes first with 8 to 10 ounces of water each . Another trick is before you develop (assuming you are using fiber base ) is to presoak the paper in room temperature water for about a minute , before you put it into the developer this will saturate the paper with fresh water so there's less chemistry absorbed , and less to wash out .

You've got a nice laminar flow washer setup , test it with some Kodak HT-2 hypo test reagent , I think you will be surprised how well your setup works . I have a couple archival washers the biggest problem is a lack of velocity of water and tiny air bubbles forming on the print surface , you've got those problems licked .
Best Regards Mike

 

[ratmandu]

Mike,

I'm actually just using RC paper for now, since I'm really just getting started into printing. I'm holding off on trying fiber paper until I really get to a point where I would consider myself decent at it.
Right now, my 4th (and last) tray, which I use for my first wash, uses about a gallon of water (it's a pretty big tray, and barely fits on the desk i'm using).

Thanks for mentioning the Kodak HT-2, I found some recipes that look pretty easy-peasy to mix up, and think I'll go that route.

 

[bernard_L]

Well done. But, pint for pint, washing makes more efficient use of a given total volume water in several baths rather than in one go. As long as the time in each bath is enough to reach diffusion equilibrium; that time should be a few minutes at most with RC paper. You could extend the (good) idea of a pre-rinse by having two wash trays; each one with just internal agitation by an aquarium pupm (or whatever). And with HT-2 you can make sure you are doing right.

 

[daleeman]

Love the innovation here. My wife and I are downsizing and I am storing this design into my 7 working bits of brain cells left to consider for a darkroom space.

 

[Neal]

Dear ratmandu,

Nice. Good luck with your residual fixer testing.

Neal Wydra

 

[jvo]

i haven't had water in the darkroom either, so have just used a holding bath and taken to the kitchen where i put up the archival print washer - it's work for years.

your diy project will be useful if i get dissatisfied with my current process! thanks.

 

[paul ron]

thats great! i love inovative diy projects.

 

[Jim Jones]

Ratmandu, most of the seven darkrooms I've improvised over the years had no running water. In all of them I washed in trays with agitation. Rather than dump wash trays, the water was recycled into earlier trays in the process. Up to 32 8x10 prints were washed in a succession of three deep trays with continuous shuffling. This system is labor intensive, but uses at most a few ounces of wash water per print. In college a helper and I could turn out 200 RC prints in an evening, all spotted and with subject identification on the back. Such prints were intended for publicity releases, and permanence was not really important. However, forty years later very few prints of the one or two thousand that I still have show signs of deterioration.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

This is very useful for me since I live in California where there still is a drought.

 

[daliborwalk]

Today I have made low cost print washer using aquaristic pump for water movement. There are 18 to 20 litres of water in the tray. So you can wash more prints in one time though you have only one (none) water supply, depends on number of pumps-trays-shower pipes.
https://www.instagram.com/tv/B7tqSfhp_uf/?igshid=st58j321bsyh