Kindermann steel tanks sizes?

I bought a Kindermann with 3x 120 spirals. But I am wondering if it's a correct combo or maybe that tank was supposed to be used with 4x 35mm spirals.
As is with the 3 spirals correctly stacked, the top spiral is by the brim, and filling needs more than 1liter but ~1,1liter, which means more than the default volume of usual C41 kits, at least in the metric part of this world. For BW no problem if I use HC-110 but Foma powder kits are calculated for 1 liter solution.

The height of the tank is 195mm.

I have searched google.de in german with "Kindermann Entwicklungsdose" and extra combinations of keywords (120, Größen, Stahl,...) but found no docs.

this is what I have:

That looks like a correct fit for the reels in the tank, assuming the lid doesn't have parts that project below the top of the tank body.

The diameter of the tank is determined by the size of a stainless spiral that can hold a 36 exposure roll of 35 mm film, which is about 159 cm. The 120 can use heavier wire to separate the wider film, because it needs to hold only about half the length, but there's no way to shrink the height; the film is 62 mm wide and there's no changing that. So, including the thickness of the top and bottom bracing wires, those spirals are roughly 68-70 mm tall, which determines the inside height of the tank. Half of diameter, squared, times pi, times height is volume.

So, we've got a minimum diameter determined by one film, and a height determined by another, and a compromise set of dimensions determined by wanting to put both in the same tank to save money -- and an original use case in which a photographer would typically either use one-shot developers, mixed from working solution or concentrate to the desired final volume, or would keep a relatively large quantity (often 2.5 to 5 liters, if not more) of replenished developer on hand, use it as needed, and replenish based on how many films were processed. C-41 was never really intended for hand processing in "small" tanks like this one; it was made for replenishment in processing machines that would either run dozens of rolls at once in much larger tanks than this, or would run the film more or less continuously, one roll behind the other, for an entire shift.

The kits we get now are really aimed at users who'll handle one or two rolls at a time, and for that, 1 liter is plenty. Until you get a tank like this and need to process three rolls of 120 at a time.

For B&W, the solution is fairly simple: use diluted developer, one shot, and discard the used solution; mix more as needed. Your fixer can be diluted 10% and you'll never know the difference; it'll still fix the same number of films and there's enough safety factor in the recommended time you'll still get fully fixed film with 10% more water in the solution.

For C-41, perhaps surprisingly, the answer is the same: top up your solutions with distilled water to 1.1 liters (or your actual required volume, check it first) and, in this case, add 10% to developing time (blix will be fine). You'll have much more variation in activity than this over the life of a C-41 kit (12 to 20 rolls is called out, depending who made the kit), and unless you make optical prints and have been doing so for a good while, you'll never notice any difference in the negatives.

Donald Qualls said:

For C-41, perhaps surprisingly, the answer is the same: top up your solutions with distilled water to 1.1 liters (or your actual required volume, check it first) and, in this case, add 10% to developing time (blix will be fine). You'll have much more variation in activity than this over the life of a C-41 kit (12 to 20 rolls is called out, depending who made the kit), and unless you make optical prints and have been doing so for a good while, you'll never notice any difference in the negatives.

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I did think of diluting the C41 developer accordingly but was unsure if this will not break the chemical effect somewhat, some threshold effect of the compound. If it's just about adding time then all good.
There's always some variation around the theoretical dilution, residual water of the presoaking and the other way around, residual dev lost in the tank (the initial volume rather going slightly down after few rolls) but these are very small variations, not like +10% dilution.
So I will just try +10% dev time.

the other little annoyance is practicality about the container. I like to use 1liter glass bottles, and these don't take 1100ml, but to the very top (to the cork) 1050ml. Have to find an alternative...

Yeah, bottle size is inconvenient. I'm currently using Arista accordion bottles, they're sold as 1 liter but clearly could hold as much as about 1.5 l -- I have to compress them quite a bit to get the air out with a 1 qt (950 ml) batch of chemistry inside.

Glass bottles aren't best anyway; you'd like to remove more of the air inside (this matters more if you're likely to run your developer out to the end of its two month shelf life, than if you'll use up its capacity in a couple weeks). Some folks drop clean glass marbles into the bottle to bring the solution right up to the stopper, but then if you go one marble over, you've got (at the least) an annoying job of pouring everything out, chemicals and marbles, and putting everything back less one marble. If you use plastic bottles from drinking water or soft drinks (remove the labels and relabel them for what's actually inside, obviously), they're airtight enough with the original caps, which generally don't need a gasket inside (they're made to seal without one), and you can squeeze the air out as you close the cap. Sizing is still an issue, though -- not too many of those come in sizes other than 375, 500, 750, 1 liter, and 2 liter. The one liter are too small for 1.1 (will hold about 1050 ml like your beer bottle) and the 2 l are unwieldy large, though you can squeeze them enough to push out the air with 1+ liter of liquid inside -- but then they probably won't stand upright on a shelf.

Honestly, having bought three of them recently, I'm already starting to dislike the accordion bottles, too. They have too much spring-back; I have to compress the bottle with my left hand while I screw on the cap with my right, and it's hard to do that without either over compressing the bottle (and spilling chemical) or leaving air inside (I can, at present, only process at most about one tank a week, so shelf life is a concern). Also, the lids have a gasket inside, which I'm certain will deteriorate over time (never seen one that didn't), and they're hard to get tight enough the bottle won't seep air back inside and lose its compression. I'm just about to buy a few one-liter bottles of drinking water. They don't protect from light (also desirable, especially for fixer products as the dissolved silver complex reacts with light over time), but they're nicely airtight and plenty large for my quart chemical kits. The accordion bottles are also inconvenient to label -- there's a label on the top of the cap, but it's small and I don't keep grease pencils or dry erase markers around (I've been marking the contents with a permanent marker on the cap label, i.e. "C-41 Color Dev", and then stick bits of tape on the shoulder of the bottle with mix date and a tally of rolls processed).

I think it says something about the conflicting requirements that after more than a century and a quarter of essentially modern film in home darkrooms, there are still multiple options for storing chemicals -- there isn't one best solution that everyone has adopted because it works better for everyone.

I don't know why the accordion bottles are sold.
They are impossible to completely clean, and most of then are highly permeable to oxygen!

@MattKing I presume they're still offered because people still buy them. I've bought my last one. I was just in my photo storage room this morning, picking out cameras for a trip to the dog park (yes, I observed social distancing; never got closer to another human than about twenty-five feet), and noticed that the C-41 color dev and C-41 blix bottles had expanded again (the Df96 bottle has stayed squashed, making it really easy to see the others misbehaving). If I can't even tighten the caps airtight enough for the bottles to stay compressed, they're not protecting my chemistry.

PETE beverage bottles are tight -- I've got a couple bottles of Diafine that are still squashed and airspace free after seven years in a closet and another five in a shed (I doubt they froze due to concentration, but it also gets above 100F in there in the summer). Those are bottles designed to hold gas -- otherwise your soda would be flat after a few weeks in transit and in your fridge.

Another option for glass bottle storage, if that's what's available, that I forgot to mention (a little hazardous, but very effective): blanket the liquid with butane before closing the bottle. The fuel for butane lighters is sold in cans (tobacconists will have it, if the grocery store doesn't). Hold the can upside down with the tip inside the neck of the bottle or jar, and pull the nozzle for a couple seconds to discharge the liquid butane (carefully -- don't do this near a possible source of ignition, and don't spray it on yourself, as it'll frostbite your skin). Then quickly close up the container, and good to go. Butane is heavier than air, so it'll blanket the chemical even if you still have air in the container, and relative to developers and such, it's effectively inert. I've done this with a batch of double strength Dektol stock solution and it hasn't changed color in ten-plus years of storage (had a five gallon powder pack that I got cheap about fifteen years ago; I was still using it regularly two years later).

MattKing said:

I don't know why the accordion bottles are sold.
They are impossible to completely clean, and most of then are highly permeable to oxygen!

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yes, in my experience accordion bottles are bs. The discussions about oxidation of chemicals are endless like byzantine theology, but in my experience 1liter C41 chemicals with a little bit air under the cork doesn't make a difference for a couple months.
Thick glass bottles with flip-tops are solid, convenient to handle, easy to pour fast into a funnel over the tank and back. I immerse the bottles in a sink full of water kept at temperature with a sous-vide circulator.




Otherwise I use also cheap plastic bottles used for domestic bleach/chlorine/ammoniac, they have an effective safety screw cork, and seem to be not porous over the time, or not significantly. I buy some, like 1€/$/£ each, throw away the chlorine or ammoniac, wash and rinse thoroughly. I typically store BW fixer in them. Compress a bit the sides to get the chemical to the brim before I screw the cork. They stay compressed in the given shape, do not move back.. Here for instance one liter Ilford Rapid fixer:

antonio_b said:

Otherwise I use also cheap plastic bottles used for domestic bleach/chlorine/ammoniac, they have an effective safety screw cork, and seem to be not porous over the time, or not significantly.

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Aha!! Cheaper than water in that size. Need to remember to stop at Dollar General on the way home from work tomorrow. Of course, those are cleaning supplies, they're probably out of stock until September...

A friend just gave me this hint for developer bottles. Seagram's whiskey bottles are the appropriate dark brown color and are corked with a stanadard wine bottle size cork. If you have an evacuation stopper, as used to store wine, it removes most of the air from the bottle and will maximize the shelf life of your developer. Sounds like it's worth a "shot" (so to speak). And I'm not a particular fan of Canadian whiskey.

Andy

antonio_b said:

I bought a Kindermann with 3x 120 spirals. But I am wondering if it's a correct combo or maybe that tank was supposed to be used with 4x 35mm spirals.
As is with the 3 spirals correctly stacked, the top spiral is by the brim, and filling needs more than 1liter but ~1,1liter, which means more than the default volume of usual C41 kits, at least in the metric part of this world. For BW no problem if I use HC-110 but Foma powder kits are calculated for 1 liter solution.

The height of the tank is 195mm.

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I measured a typical "4-reel" steel tank (not Kindermann, but they're usually pretty similar). The 4-reel tank is 179mm high, for the bottom steel cylinder alone; you have something bigger. A typical 35mm reel is about 39mm high, and a typical 120 reel is about 67mm high. One can save a couple mm by interleaving the radial spars of the reels when stacking them.

For a 4-reel tank, one can develop 4 reels of 35mm or 2 reels of 120 in less than 1 liter of chemicals, leaving a couple of cm of headspace. This allows some margin for error in filling the tank, and I always thought that the headspace helped agitation, but have no tests of that.

What you have is a little bigger. I don't know if that's standard for KIndermann or if you have an unusual tank that fits nearly 5 35mm, or nearly 3 120 reels. I say "nearly" because I'm not sure if it's a good idea to develop with reels that are peeking just over the top of the tank. Be careful with the light seal of the lid and with getting chemicals all the way up to the top of the film.

AndyH said:

A friend just gave me this hint for developer bottles. Seagram's whiskey bottles are the appropriate dark brown color and are corked with a stanadard wine bottle size cork. If you have an evacuation stopper, as used to store wine, it removes most of the air from the bottle and will maximize the shelf life of your developer. Sounds like it's worth a "shot" (so to speak). And I'm not a particular fan of Canadian whiskey.

Andy

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It'd take me at least a couple years to drink enough Seagrams to have just bottles for monobath, color dev, and blix, never mind final rinse or any other developers, stand-alone fixer, and so on. Now, other dark bottles that will take a wine cork might be more accessible. Who do I know who drinks wine? Hmmm...

Donald Qualls said:

It'd take me at least a couple years to drink enough Seagrams to have just bottles for monobath, color dev, and blix, never mind final rinse or any other developers, stand-alone fixer, and so on. Now, other dark bottles that will take a wine cork might be more accessible. Who do I know who drinks wine? Hmmm...

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Even if you pour it out (or pour it into a decanter for display), they're cheaper than the accordion bottles, at least in New Hampshire.

Drink free or die.....

Andy

AndyH said:

Even if you pour it out (or pour it into a decanter for display), they're cheaper than the accordion bottles, at least in New Hampshire.

Drink free or die.....

Andy

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In Washington State, after they "privatized" liquor sales, the cost of liquor rose to be almost as high as we pay here in Canada, just a short drive away.

I like wine bottles but have switched to Mason Bell jars, as they are readily available at Walmart's in many sizes.

Do no use the metal lids, but store them for dry goods or caners whom do need them.

Instead, buy the white plastic mason jar lids from Walmart, which will no rust or react with darkroom chemistry that is no acids.

As far as keeping the air off the chemistry, I have yet to test this, but IIRC, paraffin wax floats, so if a new cleaned jar, say one or two quarts, is used, a possibility is to add hot water to fill half a jar, then gently, pour in about four ounces of melted FOOD GRADE Paraffin Wax, also found at Walmart's.

Letting this cool completely, to the freezing point and below, might do the trick, and let the expanding water turned ice, force up the wax seal so that it is a free floating cover for what ever developer, etc, you put in the bottle, after emptying the water used to make the seal.

The idea is to make a bottle float that is thin enough to Partly Turn in the squarish bottle, but solid enough to be used until the bottle is empty or needs washing, at which point, you just break out the wax seal, clean the jar and reform the seal before putting more chemistry into it, allowing your gained experience to adjust the thickness of the seal by more closely adjusting the melted wax volume.

Keep this wax separate from other seals in the darkroom, just to be certain of no interactions between chemicals.

Because it is a petroleum product, I do no think freezing to normal freezer temps will cause issues, however Bees wax, should you substitute it for this method of making floating lids, must no be frozen, period and is the most hydrophobic natural product on Terra.

I hope this helps so far as being a viable option for storing darkroom chemistry for B&W processes, and should you give it a try before I post on the topic here, let us know how it works for you.

Be Safe, Be Happy and Godspeed to all.