Stop Bath.. How important?

The only time I remove film from reels is if I am using Jobo reels.

 

Every time I did immersion slowly with hangars, I would get trails of undeveloped area from hangar hole area on the bottom. Slower the immersion, worse the problem. Smash it down in less than 2 sec, problem goes away never to return.
I special ordered a hangar rack from Arkay. Six or 8 hangars fit and film does not touch. Only one handle to deal with. Again smash it down.

 

unorthodox is good
i'm glad to read you solved your problem !

 

Why hot water? Does it remove the "photoflo" faster and more completely than cold water?

 

Hot water removes any residue of gelatin faster and more completely - maybe photoflo as well.

 

Hot water is better at cleaning the reels. Periodically I will give the reels an overnight soak in a weak sodium carbonate solution and then a brief rinse.

 

I do not soak my film in PhotoFlo while on the reels. I am too lazy to wash the reels that well. And I love see-sawing my film thru a bowl of PhotoFlo -- for no better reason than I've been doing it that way since '77.

 

Once I started using a Jobo processor I put PhotoFlo in a plastic bowl and put roll film loosely wound or sheet film into the bowl and slowly move it around for a couple of minutes since Jobo publishes not to put their reels in PhotoFlo.

 

Do you fill the tank almost completely, every time, regardless of the number of rolls? Do you fill the tank with an empty reel if you have only one roll to process?

 

Yes to both

 

bump - Can the stop bath be any sort of acid solution as long as it is approximately the same ph as "standard" stop bath?

 

Probably yes, but not all acid solutions have the same buffering capacity, in other words the ability to keep their pH relatively stable after use. Acetic and citric acid have good characteristics in this regard, they are cheap and quite safe to use. Overall, they are the typical choices for good reasons.

 

In theory it could, a weak Sulphuric acid stop bath was used in some B&W reversal processes but the following step the reversal bleach also contained Sulphuric acid. I definitely wouldn't recommend using Sulphuric acid though.

In practice the cheapest and most readily available acids are Acetic Acid and Citric acid you can get white (clear) distilled vinegar in any food supermarket and citric acid in some stores as well.

Ian