HC-110 - syrup or stock solution

I use HC-110 sometimes and think it is somewhat difficult to measure when it is so syrupish (is that a word???).

Is it recommenable to dilute it (e.g. 1+4) and then make working solutions from that? Or is it NOT recommended. It would certainly be easier to make working solution this way.

My first-choice developer, Rodinal (where you in doubt ), will not respond well to this treatment. But would HC-110?

Greetings Morten

I, and I think most HC-110 users, work from the syrup as opposed to making a stock solution. Get a syringe from your local drug store or pharmacy to measure the syrup. Draw some water into your syringe, give it a shake then squirt that into your graduate to make sure you get all of the syrup out of the syringe. Finish by adding the suitable amount of water to make your final solution. Solution B is 1:31. The syrup lasts forever while a stock solution has a limited shelf life. Used this way, HC-110 is one of the most economical developers on the market. I keep both HC-110 and Rodinal on hand as my regular developers. I particularly like HC-110 with HP5+.

Regards,

Sean

The solvent in the "Syrup-like" version of HC-110 is glycerine. Undiluted, the syrup has a very long shelf life.

When you add water to the syrup, the reducing agents will begin to oxidize. How fast they will oxidize, I do not know. Perhaps someone has done some testing?

Agreed. I've used HC-110 for 20-years - always from the syrup. I have a small graduate to measure with - pour in the syrup, add some water, then pour the solution into the larger graduate used for mixing. Follow with more water in the small graduate to be sure you've gotten all of the syrup.
juan

Thanks for the quick replies. I will use the syringe method (which I use with Rodinal already).

I've had a stock solution of HC110 sit on the shelf in a 1/2 empty container for months at a time, and it still worked as expected. Is this recommended? Probably not, so if you can go from syrup, I would do so.

I can't find a syringe with a big enough tip to make mixing my developer from the syrup easy enough to warrant doing. Then again, I go through a 1 litre container of stock in fairly short order, so I have never had any issues with the stock solution going off...

If it's an issue, mix up a batch of stock and decant it into smaller containers. They would be airtight, so the stock would keep for a few months. Kodak's doc on HC110 (j-24) says that Dil-B stock solution in an air tight contanier will keep for 3 months...I would say this is very conservative, based on prior experience.

Another vote for the syringe method, and keeping HC-110 in its syrup-y state. Since I use dilution H (1:63) I draw 15ml into the syringe (or half an ounce) and add it to 31 onces of water. Now, from what I understand the European version of HC-110 is a slightly thinner - less concentrated - syrup, so dilution ratios have to be adjusted accordingly if you do indeed have the Euro HC-110. But to make a long answer short: keep it in its concentrated state and it will keep for a long, long time.

There is another HC-110 thread around here with a link to the HC-110 Unofficial Resource Page, and that's the place for most HC-110 questions.

Joe

The concentration of HC110 in Europe is different from the U.S. You may want to check this website for the European dilutions.

http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/hc110/index.html

I'v been using HC-110 for years always mixing it with water from my dehumidafier . I use one of those collapseable bottles to get the air out and it lasts a long time . The mix I'm using now is over a year old.

Shmoo said:

The concentration of HC110 in Europe is different from the U.S. You may want to check this website for the European dilutions.

http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/hc110/index.html

Click to expand...

Thanks. I am aware of it already. I use the concentrated syrup, and have never seen the euroHC (strangely enough)

Morten

I use HC-110 both ways (stock solution and direct from concentrate) depending on what I'm doing. Sometimes, in my homemade submini developing tank, I need to mix 60 ml of solution at 1:119, which would be 0.5 ml of syrup -- it's impossible to measure the syrup at better than plus or minus 20% accuracy in this kind of quantity, at least with the equipment I have, so I mixed up 120 ml of stock solution (which used 30 ml of syrup -- easy to measure), and use 2 ml of the stock, which I can measure accurately. For all my other development, I mix direct from concentrate; when I opened the bottle I divided the syrup into four smaller bottles, with only the tiniest of air spaces, and have opened them as needed. The syrup in the last bottle is now well over a year beyond original opening, and works the same as it did when new. The last time I used the stock solution, it was four months past mixing, and (stored in a sealed bottle with perhaps 20% air space) was still fine and had normal activity.

I use HC-110 from both the syrup and a stock solution. I think the stock solution approach probably lends itself to greater accuracy for most darkroom workers.

I've also evolved to using a different stock solution than Kodak's recommendation. I first read about this particular method in a workbook published by the Maine Photographic Workshops. This stock solution is mixed 1+9 from the syrup concentrate and so is very easy to mix into other volumes because every 10 units of stock contains one unit of concentrate. So, for example, to mix a quart of dilution B which is 1+31 from the syrup concentrate, I take 10 ounces of 1+9 stock and add 22 ounces of water.

I actually standardized my zone system testing using this stock solution and varying dilution instead of time which I've found to be very convenient. I generally use dilutions which vary by 5 parts water to get different development effects. With this system I take the 1+9 stock and add vary quantities of water in 5-part increments to end up using dilutions like 1+9 (stock), 1+14 (which is dilution A), 1+19 (dilution C), 1+24, 1+29 (which is my standard solution for most films and close to dilution B), 1+34, 1+39 (dilution D) and so on. I try to standardize a development time at 6 minutes with most films.

Joe