Kodalith 1+29 and bleached Ilford MGIV WT - no infectious development

I have been dabbling with lith printing for the last few weeks. I dug through Tim Rudman's excellent lith printing book, settled on Ilford MGIV WT paper, first processed in regular paper developer, stopped, fixed, thoroughly washed, then bleached in Copper Sulfate rehal bleach, following Grant Haist's formula.

After another wash cycle I would then use self mixed Kodalith (aka D-85) diluted 1+9 and then 1+29 in later runs. My mix uses a molar equivalent amount of Formalin instead of Paraformaldehdye, but otherwise closely matches the original formula. I waited half an hour after mixing to allow the Formalin + Sulfite reaction to complete.

But regardless of what I do, I can't seem to obtain anything which would resemble a true lith print I would get interesting colors, but not even a trace of infectious development. When using Kodalith in 1+9 dilution, redevelopment starts very quickly and is mostly complete after two minutes. When diluting further down to 1+29, redevelopment takes about ten minutes, leading to brownish prints with very poor contrast and very weak Dmax, even before fixing.

Have I found the only lith developer unsuitable for lith printing? Is one of my ingredients not suitable for this type of developer? My Hydroquinone, sourced from Keten, looks very gray, but works well in regular paper developers. Any other things I should look at?

I also tried, not 2nd pass lith printing, but using Defender 15-D as first developer.
Except giving a bit more contrast, the developer didn't start anything at all with Ilford FB WT.
Hydroquinone was a little bit gray.
I also replaced the potassium carbonate in part B of the recipe with sodium carbonate.

Dear Rudeofus,

You should have better luck with Slavich or Foma papers.

Good luck

Neal Wydra

I´d stick with the rehal bleach formula by Tim Rudman. I am using it myself and it works like a charm. It is quite strong, but as you go for complete bleaching, there is no need to dilute.

The formula you state in the linked thread has an awfully small amount of bromide and will probably convert from "rehal bleach" to "bleach" quite quickly. Maybe it was intended for a one shot use?

Besides, the "boiled down" formula you posted there is not the equivalent of the EB-2 by Grant Haist quoted from photo.net. Your formula uses 3g Sodium Hydroxide while the formula quoted at photo.net uses Hydrogen peroxide, 3% solution.

Yes, the original bleach formula is indeed odd, and I would recommend great care when adding Hydrogen Peroxide to any bath that gets in touch with photographic products. Scores of blistered E100VS test strips treated in experimental peroxide rehal bleaches convinced me, that peroxide and film should never meet. I did indeed leave out the Hydrogen Peroxide, and used a lot more Bromide that the formula suggests.

Either way, the bleached prints looked exactly what they would have looked like after a regular Ferricyanide/Bromide bleach, therefore I assume, that bleaching went according to plan and had no adverse effect on my final results. In the mean time I cooked up three theories of what could have gone wrong:

1. Formalin leaked Formaldehyde: I bought the Formalin as 20% concentrate several years ago, nobody knows how much is left. I did add more Formalin to my developer, but this didn't help either.
2. Formaldehyde takes longer time to scavenge free Sulfite ions. My developer was pretty fresh, maybe I should have left it for a few days before using it, or start with Formaldehyde Bisulfite Adduct.
   
3. HQ impurities: that stash of gray/brown HQ from Keten is still one of my prime suspects, so I may just try and source some purer HQ before I waste more paper.

I have looked up the EB-2 ("Etch Bath") in Grant Haist´s book. It is a bath specifically designed for a particular reversal process of lith film, and lith film only. Actually it is a non-rehal "bleach" intended to dissolve the thin emulsion of lith film in the areas where silver is present. Definitely, this is the wrong "bleach" for a second-pass lith paper process.

I have not done too much two-pass lith, and my results were mixed. Mainly I have found out that second-pass-lith will expose any small mistake from the process (e.g. a little to much floating time in the fixer) and that second-pass lith - for me at least - does not work at normal daylight, although Tim Rudman writes that it would.

But when you google the lith formulas, you will find a lot of threads in forums that home-brew developers did not give the expected results, generally for some unknown reason. The D-85 "one-solution" formula seems to be particularly tricky, maybe you might want to try the A-B-Formula available here: https://contrastique.wordpress.com/tag/kodak-d-85/

If that does not work either, I´d try with a commercial product known to work, e.g. Moersch Easylith, and once I got that going, I´d try with a homebrew developer.