Melting emulsion in developer (w/ photos of partial-melts)

Here's what a couple of film-leaders looked like after one minute in fresh developer.

These leaders are black and white film. They've been sitting for around 4 years after my testing of D316 and Mocon, and those films developed fine back then. The developer was D316, which is similar to Mocon which I reported on here: (there was a url link here which no longer exists). This developer is similar to XTOL, and though it melted those test-strips, I used it to develop a roll of FP4+ yesterday, which came out fine. So the soup is fine. Any idea why the melting?

Mark Overton

The soup may be fine, but there could be a developer problem. Do not mix food especially soup with film chemistry.

It looks to me that something in your process was way too hot!

Heat or bad hardening or subbing for the film.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

Heat or bad hardening or subbing for the film.
PE

Click to expand...

The developer was at 20 degrees C, but those old leaders had been through several summers reaching a bit over 30 C indoors. Oddly, one or two other leaders from the same era were fine: They darkened as expected, with no hint of melting. These leaders are a mixture of Kodak, Ilford, and Fuji, and I don't know which are which. Could those summers have degraded the gelatin for only one brand?
Mark Overton

albada said:

Any idea why the melting?

Click to expand...

Film layers degradation

Mark, something caused near total degradation of the emulsion. Looking again at the examples, the emulsion appears to be intact indicating good hardness, but it has separated from the support which points to the subbing. Of course, water problems, pH problems, and a host of other problems could crop up and cause this.

PE