single sheet 4x5 in a drum, how much chemical needed

Looking through some of old stuff the other day, I came across a very small, 5 1/2 x 2 1/2 Cibachrome drum used to develop a single 4x6 sheet of Cibachrome paper. I'm thinking it might be great for developing a single sheet of 4x5 B&W film. It only holds 1 3/4 oz of chemical.
My question, is this enough chemical (1 3/4 oz) to develop one 4x5 sheet of film?
My thought is, if that was enough to develop a 4x6 sheet of paper, then it should be enough to do a 4x5 sheet of film.
What do you guys think?

4x5 BTZS tubes hold only 60mL, so I reckon you'll be fine unless you want to use unusually-dilute developer. Since it's a drum and therefore continuous agitation, there's not a lot of point in going for really high dilutions anyway.

The Xtol spec sheet says you need 25mL of stock per 4x5 (100mL per 80 sq.in), so your 52mL drum will be fine at 1+1 with that for sure.

D76 specs call for much more stock but anecdotally, people seem happy using D76 with much smaller quantities than recommended. It'd be fine with D76 stock for sure, probably OK at 1+1 unless you had a heavily-exposed sheet.

PS: are you sure about the "only holds" thing, or is the 1.75oz (52mL) thing the minimum quantity required for uniform coverage? Drums usually specify minima not maxima unless there's a dedicated cup in the lid (Jobo print drums) or cap (BTZS) or something to hold the chems before the drum is tipped over and rolled.

I have that same small drum and have used it to process a single sheet of 5x7 (it just fits). The capacity for chemicals is limited by the cup under the intake lid. I used HC-110 and it worked fine, but it was too small for my roller base and I had to rotate it back and forth manually. Kind of a pain.

Jonathan

Dear Rick-okc,

I once used that same drum and found that while it worked for Cibachrome paper, one end was not sufficiently light tight for film. I solved the problem with some tape. Of course yours might be fine.

Good luck,

Neal Wydra

I have an old Beseler drum I used to process 8 X 10 Cibachrome prints back in the day. I just bought my first 4X5 camera a few weeks back and decided to use that drum to process my film. The drum takes 2.5 ounces of chemistry. Out of curiosities sake, I loaded four 4X5 sheets of film into the drum (some of my test shots) and added the 2.5 ounces of Xtol. The negs came out perfectly. I did make sure the drum was absolutely level so each negative would get covered by the developer. So you should have no problems with your drum and the amount of chemistry it takes.

Jim B.

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