how to store chemistry in a non-dark darkroom

Hi all,

I've set up a darkroom in the basement of our house, sharing a room with a washing machine (no, it cannot be used for drum processing. The household public opinion is not in favour).

When using the room as a darkroom, I board up the window - at all other times, daylight flows in. This leads me to wonder about how to store my chemicals - how much deteoriation will exposure to daylight cause?

What I have is an assortment of

- Plastic bottles containing non-diluted developer, fixer, selenium toner
- Clear or brown glass bottles containing dilutions of the above
- Clear or brown bottles with stock solutions made from dry powder (D76, Xtol, Calbe fixer)
- Bags of dry powder (most are light tight it seems, so perhaps not an issue).

Would it be a good idea to store it all away in a light tight box outside darkroom hours, or does daylight not influence storage life?

Thanks!

Best option is to store in a cupboard, 0r boxes, some chemicals are best kept in the dark. Nothing should be kept where sunlight might fall on it.

Ian

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but its primarily the developer you have to worry about it. It sounds like you have plenty of amber bottles-why not use them for the developer? If I have too much liquid to keep in amber bottles I just put an inverted box over them, or you can use a plastic garbage bag. There is no reason to move them from the room they are in when there are much simpler solutions.


Wayne

Søren-

Do you have young children in the home?

My recommendation would be to try to find some kind of cabinet or cupboard that you can use for storage of your chemicals that allows them to be in the dark most of the time, and that also can be locked to prevent curious young hand from getting into mischief. If you know someone who is upgrading a kitchen, for example, you might be able to get them to give you some of their old cabinets that you can recycle for this purpose.

I use a plastic Rubbermaid tub with a snap-on lid. It's a fairly dark blue, and I just keep it in a dark cool corner of the house. If I get a leak the tube contains it (hasn't happened yet) and I pile stuff on it so that in the rare event that there are kids about, they can't get into it.

cheers

Monophoto said:

Søren-

Do you have young children in the home?

My recommendation would be to try to find some kind of cabinet or cupboard that you can use for storage of your chemicals that allows them to be in the dark most of the time, and that also can be locked to prevent curious young hand from getting into mischief. If you know someone who is upgrading a kitchen, for example, you might be able to get them to give you some of their old cabinets that you can recycle for this purpose.

Click to expand...

Hey, cut it out and quite trying to ruin the kid's fun. I have many fond memories from my childhood of rifling through my dad's darkroom, mixing concoctions, making prints, playing with mercury. The locked, recycled kitchen cabinets full of his nudie pics received special attention.


Wayne

I too use a Rubbermaid bin to store my dry chemistry. I place in the cold cellar so that it remains cool, dry and out of the sunlight. Cupboards are used to store mixed stock or working solutions

It's not as much of a problem as you might have been led to believe. Some of my stock solutions are in brown bottles, but most are in clear plastic bottles. Light has never been a problem. As long as you keep your chemistry away from direct sunlight, you shouldn't have any problems either.

Thanks all for your responses.

Monophoto - you raise a very good point; I do have children in my household. The six-year old has actually taken quite an interest in darkroom work, and knows that she mustn't touch the liquids, not even the ones that are clear like water, so she is not as much of an issue as her younger sister. A lockable cabinet sounds like the right thing.

To store light sensitive chemicals in a non dark environment, I always use glass bottles, of any kind, and put one of those black plastic bags, used to pack photographic paper, up side down over it (like a tea pot warmer). Simple and cheap...

All the best for 2008,
Philippe