Just wondering is this among the least nasty fixers available? And could you use a hardener with it?
Fixers generally aren't very nasty to begin with, unless you're taking about potassium cyanide fixer used in the 19th century for wet plate photography, and still today by some practitioners of the medium.
The hardener used in home darkrooms is usually potassium alum. It requires an acidic environment in order to effectively harden gelatin, so you'd have to acidify this fixer if you wanted to add potassium alum hardener to it. This will make it equivalent to any other acid, rapid fixer. Still just as harmless, too.
Thanks so it is only very slightly acidic at 6.75 and less than Ilford which is 5.1 but seems to have all the working efficiencies of said fixer
One reason fixers are often acidic is to prevent dichroic fog and to stop development instantly if a stop bath is omitted or happens to be ineffective (exhausted). This fixer won't offer this advantage, but it won't matter in most cases.
The sulfite present in this fixer will protect it against oxidation - until it runs out. In a half-full bottle, only so much oxygen is present and as long as the bottle remains closed, a little sulfite will have been sacrificed in order to protect the thiosulfate. Things are different if the bottle is opened regularly, for instance to remove a little bit of its contents. In that scenario, there's a continuous replenishment of the oxygen in the bottle and the fixer won't last as long. So part of the reason why this bottle of fixer lasted the way it did, was most likely because it was undisturbed for most of the time.
Some nice results from the scans.
Nice cat. Looks a lot like mine when he was young.
