Home made Agfa 130 OOPs

[ericbrueg]

Home made Agfa 135 OOPs

Any input, opinions, or related stories appreciated

I made my first batch of developer from raw chemicals.
I tried the AGFA / ANSCO 135 Recipe from digital truth.
I tripled all the values below to make a larger batch
Everything was added in the proper sequence, and at the correct temperature.

The Soup is a murky brown color, only the darkest shadows appear on the paper after a normally generous exposure and 2 minutes of development. All of the under developed emulsion also seems to stay intact all the way through to the wash.

A Full “room light” fog test showed that the developer would actually produce black.

Should I discard the whole gallon or add some ingredients to see if I can salvage it?


Water, 125F/52C 750 ml
Metol 1.6 g
Sodium Sulfite (anhydrous) 24 g
Hydroquinone 6.6 g
Sodium Carbonate (anhydrous) 20.5 g
Potassium Bromide 2.8 g
Cold water to make 1L

Eric,

*edited post to correct from Agfa 130 to 135*

 

[eric]

I've never made Agfa 135 before but the title of your thread is Agfa 130 which includes glycin. If you cut/paste the Agfa 135 recipe from digitaltruth, it has 24 g of Sodium Carbonate (anhydrous) but I'm not too familiar with this recipe to know if the 3.5 g missing will affect it.

 

[Tom Hoskinson]

ericbrueg: From your description, something went wrong - the murky brown color of the developer suggests that you may have generated some hydroquinone or metol oxidation products. Maybe the mixing water was too hot or you mixed the soup too vigorously??? I'd dump it and try again.

Seethere was a url link here which no longer exists)

 

[phritz phantom]

i too wanted to make a thread about home mixed developers.

i've lately tryed mixing paper developers as well and had some strange results.
i tried ansco 120 and ansco 103, both with added benzotriazole.
both developers worked fine (although did not deliver the image tone that i was searching for) with moersch select sepia fb paper and foma rc paper.
all other papers (kentmere fineprint, multigrade iv cold tone fb, maco multispeed rc) only delivered a foggy grey mess.
i'd gladly admit any mixing errors, but since it works with some papers and had similar results with two developers, i don't think that's the case.

an explanation would be that selfmixed chemistry doesn't work well with papers with incorporated developing agents... but that doesn't sound too plausible.
but i used the foma rc for lithprinting and according to the moersch hp the select sepia paper doesn't have inc.dev.agents as well.
is there a known problem with selfmade developers and papers with inc.dev.agents?

 

[Tom Hoskinson]

ansco 103 is a cold (blue-black) tone paper developer with most papers. Adding benzotriazole should reduce the development activity. How much benzo did you add?

ansco 120 is a soft working developer that produces soft gradation. Adding benzotriazole should reduce the development activity and reduce image brilliance. How much benzo did you add to the 120?

Ansco 120 is often used in a two tray development procedure in combination with Ansco 130 to produce prints with a long tonal scale. I don't use benzotriazole with either of these developers - just Potassium Bromide.

 

[phritz phantom]

there was 0,3gr benzotriazole (no bromide) in 1l of ansco 120 stock. which was diluted 1+1 for use.
and i put 0,5gr potassium bromide in the ansco 103 stock (instead of 1,2 in the original formula) and added 50ml of 0,1% benzotriazole solution later to the 1+1 working solution.
i did develop a picture (select sepia) before adding the benzotriazole.
adding the benzotriazole slowed down the development time and gave a very brown tone with select sepia.

 

[ericbrueg]

Thanks for the input. I think I will dismiss the first attempt, and try again.

Tom, I guess I did not realize you could mix the chemicals too vigorously. I will be gentler next time. Also I suppose I have only checked the temp of my mixing valve at the low end of the scale, the water could have been too hot. I will try your formula, and only make one liter this time.

Thanks again,

 

[phritz phantom]

Thanks for the input. I think I will dismiss the first attempt, and try again.

Tom, I guess I did not realize you could mix the chemicals too vigorously. I will be gentler next time. Also I suppose I have only checked the temp of my mixing valve at the low end of the scale, the water could have been too hot. I will try your formula, and only make one liter this time.

Thanks again,

since nobody else mentioned it yet and there was talk about metol oxidation. one should add a pinch (i use half a teaspoon) of sodium sulfite to the water before the metol to prevent said oxidation.

 

[Gerald Koch]

While it is traditional to add a pimch of sulfite before adding the Metol this is really not necessary. There is some oxidation caused by dissolved onygen in the water but this is miniscule.

When mixing formulas it is important to add the ingredients in the order specified and making sure that each ingredient is dissolved before adding the next.

 

[ericbrueg]

Thanks again all, I will be sure to add a pinch of the sulfite just to be on the safe side. I will also ensure that each chemical has disolved before adding the next. I will post my resaults.

 

[john_s]

Were any of the dry ingredients discoloured? They should all be white or off-white, or at worst quite pale brown (which indicates some age).