Liquidol lasts a long time, but not indefinitely :)

[rpavich]

I've been a Liquidol user for about a year now and am loving it. It looks great, and it seems to last forever, you get really nice deep blacks...

I was making a contact sheet and found that I couldn't achieve Dmax on the clear film at the sprocket holes no matter what. It was then that I realized that my Liquidol might have gone on too long. I mixed another batch and lo and behold, nice Dmax!

I went back to the prints I had done in the preceding days and realized that they lacked deep blacks also so I printed a few replacements and they looked much better.

I learned a valuable lesson; Liquidol is great stuff, but it does have a working life

 

[pentaxuser]

My sympathies. There's a prize for whomsoever can invent a developer that is either 100% or so bad that anyone can see it. The problem with old developers is that like old soldiers they never die but only fade away, often at a rate that is almost imperceptibly slow. I have some quite old Ilford MG developer that is kept as stock in winebags and the problem is that when diluted and placed in the Novo Processor the first few prints seem OK and probably are OK but the stuff "fades" much more quickly than was the case when it was fresh stock

pentaxuser

 

[rpavich]

I guess it was happening like you say...slow and hard to detect. Bummer.

 

[M Carter]

I guess it was happening like you say...slow and hard to detect. Bummer.

Hey, nothing about Liquidol is a bummer (except that I can't buy it at the grocery store!)

I've learned as you have that it eventually begins to weaken. It can look like yellow-brown soup and still produce good prints - I've poured it into a tray and found mold growing in it even. So nowadays, it it's not a fresh batch, I drop a scrap of paper in the tray under room light and really check it out - in fact, my next print session with fresh liquidol, I'll do a max-black strip test with half-stop increments and keep it in an envelope on the wall, so I have a definite comparison. Do a quick scrap under room light, blow dry it off, compare to the strip test, so there should be no arbitrary idea of "is this black enough".

BTW, when you sense it's getting weak, you can finish your session by splashing a bit more concentrate in the tray - no need to dump it if it's not really really shot. Add a bit of concentrate and finish your session.

AND - save weakened liquidol in a separate bottle - it's a great toner! After you bleach a print, add to tired liquidol with extra water to make it half strength or weaker. With MGWT, it gives you a great warm tone, and will return highlights much better than variable toners. If you "print for toning" by adding more highlight density or a bit of flash/fog, very dilute liquidol next to a tray of stop bath will allow you complete control of highlight development. For 2nd pass lith prints, I often go to completion in lith, rinse the paper very very well, and then get the rest of the highs back with dilute Liquidol. Excellent combination, though liquidol can impart its own color in those cases - test test test.

 

[rpavich]

Hey, nothing about Liquidol is a bummer (except that I can't buy it at the grocery store!)

I've learned as you have that it eventually begins to weaken. It can look like yellow-brown soup and still produce good prints - I've poured it into a tray and found mold growing in it even. So nowadays, it it's not a fresh batch, I drop a scrap of paper in the tray under room light and really check it out - in fact, my next print session with fresh liquidol, I'll do a max-black strip test with half-stop increments and keep it in an envelope on the wall, so I have a definite comparison. Do a quick scrap under room light, blow dry it off, compare to the strip test, so there should be no arbitrary idea of "is this black enough".

BTW, when you sense it's getting weak, you can finish your session by splashing a bit more concentrate in the tray - no need to dump it if it's not really really shot. Add a bit of concentrate and finish your session.

AND - save weakened liquidol in a separate bottle - it's a great toner! After you bleach a print, add to tired liquidol with extra water to make it half strength or weaker. With MGWT, it gives you a great warm tone, and will return highlights much better than variable toners. If you "print for toning" by adding more highlight density or a bit of flash/fog, very dilute liquidol next to a tray of stop bath will allow you complete control of highlight development. For 2nd pass lith prints, I often go to completion in lith, rinse the paper very very well, and then get the rest of the highs back with dilute Liquidol. Excellent combination, though liquidol can impart its own color in those cases - test test test.

Great! thanks for the tip. I did use it for about a month and a half refreshing 100ml whenever my soda bottle got low enough.