Friendly solvent for Rapid Fix?

[jvarsoke]

Sometimes I used Kodak Rapid Fix with Hardener for paper (don't ask me why) and I use a larger tray to catch the splash from a smaller tray. Unfortuantely, over time the splash tray gets fixer caked onto it. Water takes a good deal of it off with a bit of scrubbing, but there's still the equivalent of sand paper stuck onto my plastic trays.

Anyone know a good, friendly, solvent for this stuff. Maybe something in the under the kitchen sink variety?

 

[Nick Zentena]

This is why you should never let anything dry on you Avoid anything with bleach in it. It'll not be friendly when it hits the ammonia. Have you tried just letting it soak in hot water?

 

[m. dowdall]

The only solvent for dried fix that I know of is fresh fix. I use the fresh fix to clean the outside of my fix bottle every time I mix up some new fix. It works.

Michael

 

[Ole]

The stuff that's caked in probably contains sulfur "lumps", which is why it won't dissolve in water. Fix is indeed the best easily available solvent.

It doesn't have to be fresh; just not completely dead and milky. Ty dumping old spent fixer via the splash tray for a while.

 

[Peter De Smidt]

Wouldn't hypo eliminator work? I don't have the formula right here, but it's ammonia plus hydrogen peroxide plus water. Apparently it's bad for films and prints, but it won't harm your trays. (By memory--which is notoriously bad!--it 14ml non-sudsy ammonia plus 100 ml hydrogen peroxide plus 500ml water.)

 

[Photo Engineer]

There are oxidation products as fix dries that form sulfur and sulfur containing compounds complexed with silver.

The best solvent I know of is a strong solution of lye, but this fix is worse than the disease due to the nastiness of strong lye solutions.

It will work and even clean out the grunge from old hypo bottles, but beware, the lye solution is very dangerous and will burn flesh and blind eyes. It is insidious, as you sometimes don't even know you have splashed yourself.

I use rubber gloves, a lab coat and safety glasses with shields when I use it.

PE