[Largeformat] Uncolor drum processing

[Don Wilkes <don.wilkes@gems9.gov.bc.ca>]

Hello, folks...

Well, I finally got a chance to have a first go at processing b&w 4x5 negs
in my old Unicolor drum recently. It went reasonably well, but a few odd
things came up.

1. Does anyone have a relatively simple idea for keeping four negs from
sliding over each other in the drum?  Three of the sheets were fine, but
one got trapped underneath its neighbour, ruining the top third or so of
the image.  They were only test negs (I was expecting problems of some
sort!), so it wasn't devastating, but it was rather annoying.  I'm thinking
of constructing some sort of curved plastic bar, which would be hooked on
to the channels holding the sheets, separating them from each other. Um...I
hope that isn't too vague a description; I do much better with a pencil and
paper.

2. On the advice of someone on this list, I did a five-minute water
pre-bath.  Somehow, in all my years of doing b&w, I'd never had cause to do
this before, so I was quite shocked when I dumped the water, and it was
very *black*!  What really fascinated me, however, was when cleanup time
came.  I dumped the pre-soak water into the toilet, and followed that with
the exhausted developer.  The black water almost instantly turned clear!
Can someone explain the chemistry for me?

All in all, not a bad way to process, especially considering the
awkwardness or expense of other methods.  It'll take a while to iron out
some of the kinks, but I think it holds a lot of promise.  One last thing,
though -- does anyone know/remember how much liquid I should be using?  The
instructions for doing colour in the old beast disappeared many, many years
ago, so I used about a half-litre, which I was pretty sure was way more
than necessary. Better to err on the generous side, I thought, but I wonder
if there might be reasons (other than economy) to use a lot less.

Cheers,
\DonW in Victoria, Canada

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