Help me fix this soup

[Rich Ullsmith]

I have a liter of Michael and Paula's amidol in the tray. Trying to enlarge onto 8X10 Azo from a 35mm neg. Feeling froggy, I added maybe 50ml of 1% benzotriazole solution, in hopes of a little blue tinge. I know how slow this paper is, but at f4.0 3 minutes on the test strip I'm barely getting an image (3 minutes in the soup, 75f). Then I throw a test strip in the soup and turn on the lights, and it takes maybe five minutes to blacken.

I'm thinking of remixing another liter, leaving out the benzo and KBr, and adding it to the existing pan. Do you think this is a waste of time? How about metol or maybe some glycin thrown in? Any advice appreciated, as I'd rather not toss what I have. I know the amidol is good, because I printed with it a couple weeks ago.

 

[Tom Hoskinson]

I have a liter of Michael and Paula's amidol in the tray. Trying to enlarge onto 8X10 Azo from a 35mm neg. Feeling froggy, I added maybe 50ml of 1% benzotriazole solution, in hopes of a little blue tinge. I know how slow this paper is, but at f4.0 3 minutes on the test strip I'm barely getting an image (3 minutes in the soup, 75f). Then I throw a test strip in the soup and turn on the lights, and it takes maybe five minutes to blacken.

I'm thinking of remixing another liter, leaving out the benzo and KBr, and adding it to the existing pan. Do you think this is a waste of time? How about metol or maybe some glycin thrown in? Any advice appreciated, as I'd rather not toss what I have. I know the amidol is good, because I printed with it a couple weeks ago.

Rich, you may find this Azo thread useful:

Dead Link Removed

 

[Rich Ullsmith]

Thank you Tom, but I went ahead and remixed leaving out the KBr and benzo. To no avail. I am now certain of the problem: ambient darkroom temp is very low, and I have a cold lamp enlarger. I can't raise the intensity as high as I did last time, and keep it stabilized. I switched papers, and am having some fun. I browsed that link, but will definitely go back and read in depth later.