My Xtol lives!

So it’s been a crazy year for our family as we packed house and relocated across the country in the fall. This has put photography on the back burner for me, with a backlog of rolls to develop. Before our move I disposed of most of the chemistry I had mixed up, except for my 1L bottle of replenished xtol which I packed up and brought. I like the replenished approach as it is super cheap and the bottle is always at room temp and ready to go. This would have been back in July...

Fast forward to Feb. I get the picture taking and developing bug again...I find a new pouch of xtol and mix it up. Not being optimistic I decide to do a side to side clip test on the new xtol vs my old replenished xtol...I see no difference after 7 min and then fixing. Tonight I developed a roll from my backlog (delta 100) using the replenished xtol and it worked great! Very pleasantly surprised it survived a move and 6 months of just hanging out in a bottle (a good glass bottle filled to the top and kept closed with a ceramic swing top stopper).

So anecdotal evidence for the resilience of xtol, even replenished...

Thanks for posting this. Since my step daughter and grandson have moved in, my darkroom time has dropped to nothing (grandson's bed is set up in the darkroom). While I don't do XTOL replenished, my stock solution is in a wine bag in a box. You give me hope that it may still be good.

At least a couple of members here report using replenished Xtol successfully for several years if I recall correctly.

Tim Stapp, in a winebag I have had more than 18 months from Xtol on a "use once and dump" basis. You don't say how old your Xtol but if it is of a younger vintage than what I have quoted above I see every reason to be hopeful

pentaxuser

pentaxuser said:

At least a couple of members here report using replenished Xtol successfully for several years if I recall correctly.

Tim Stapp, in a winebag I have had more than 18 months from Xtol on a "use once and dump" basis. You don't say how old your Xtol but if it is of a younger vintage than what I have quoted above I see every reason to be hopeful

pentaxuser

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It lasts years for me.

OP, congrats! I do not want to sound negative, but don't you want to know if your output is affected by the developer age? I am not an expert in film development, but simply reading manufacturer's data sheets I've concluded that the output quality degrades gradually, depending on developer's age, storing conditions, dilution and replenishment rate. It's not a binary on-off switch.

I am not brave enough to follow your footsteps. I just dumped half a liter of unused ID-11 because it sat under the sink longer than Ilford's storage time recommendation. I am sure it works, but I do not know how much quality I'd lose if I used it.

I’m using a batch of Xtol that I originally mixed in 2017.

Sirius Glass said:

It lasts years for me.

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Same for me.