Large developing tank for 120 film?

Lachlan Young

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Currently I'm using 3 of the 3 reel paterson tanks, and 2 of the 2 reel ones, so 13 total rolls.

You can roll 2 x120 on to those paterson reels & if you are very moderately careful, they won't shift around. If you already have 13 reels, I'd suggest getting another 6 reels & 2 of the 5 reel tanks - which if you do 3 parallel runs on both those tanks, with the reels loaded with 6 rolls per tank (i.e. 12 rolls per run), that will get you to 36 rolls run in a very short space of time (under 2 hrs). A few afternoons/ evenings & your backlog will be cleared.

I have 2 of the cages for Paterson reels, but they only appeared by happenstance - I think they were made by Hewes, but I'll need to check the control strip clips to be sure. The chances of finding something similar stateside might be slightly less easy than getting a tooth from a hen.
 
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Romanko

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Just wondering how much time you spent shooting 100 rolls of film? As @Lachlan Young said, just spend a weekend developing with whatever tanks and reels you have. You'll have to spend a considerable amount of time loading the film on the reels regardless of how you process them.
 

darkroommike

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It will "only" process 18 rolls of 120/220 per run. But it was completely doable (and I did it) but that's a big investment to catch up only a "few" rolls of film.
 

darkroommike

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What you want are more sets of reels! Paterson reels only work when bone dry. You could be processing with one set and have two sets drying. The MU-8 tank holds 5 reels (I think, I am not primarily a "pat guy"). And using a forced air dryer for the reels.
 
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