How Do You Store Your Chemicals?

Maver!ck

Maver!ck

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Recently started my own b&w film developing again and was just wondering how you store your chemicals. Do you stick with the proper, expandable accordion type bottles? What I was thinking was with a range of different sizes of 'recyclable' plastic bottles, water bottles, milk containers, etc, etc it would be quite easy to keep them full to the top whilst using as required, thereby extending shelf life in comparison to a single 'unfull' 5l container. Any issues with this approach?
 
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In re-closeble dark glass bottle and in a very cool place max 8°C.
 
Kodiak Qc said:
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In re-closeble dark glass bottle and in a very cool place max 8°C.
Click to expand...

What is the significance of 8°C?

I always store and develop my chemicals at room temperature. It means that my chemicals are always ready to go and I don't have to do anything tricky to maintain a constant temperature during development.
 
skysh4rk said:
What is the significance of 8°C?
Click to expand...
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That's the temp of the deep cellar. Since I don't have to much
enlarging nowadays, I discovered that room temperature was
not good for the prepared solutions as they were aging too fast
in half full containers. When I need them, I just place the bottles
in a small tub to warm up.

No secrets… old tricks.
 
I usually use liqued developers, one shot, they are never around long enough to go off so keep them in manufacturers bottles. On occasion I will mix up a 5 litre batch of ID11 and then I use the concertina bottles. Also store at room temperature in the darkroom ready for use, I keep the darkroom temperature at 20 degrees plus or minus 1 deg. Also keep a tank of water in the darkroom so I have water on hand at room temp. for mixing and washing. I no longer do C41 and E6 due to health considerations, I get those done at Peak but still manage most all B&W.
 
I use a variety of glass bottles, primarily 2.5L that used to contain film cleaner. I also have smaller 500ml/20fl.oz bottles that I transfer to when the level gets low enough in the larger bottle.
 
I keep mine in a cardboard box in the bathroom. I leave them all in the bottles / packets that they came in
 
Depends on the volume, highly concentrated stuff goes in Calpol bottles of which I go through at an alarming rate, dilute stuff (d76, d23) go in 2l plastic bottles, accelerators go on juice bottles since they tend not to go off. All stowed under the kitchen sink with all the other nasty household chemicals.
 
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I use HC110 syrup which is mixed one-shot, so no storage issues. You can keep that stuff pretty much anywhere and it doesn't go off, just goes a bit darker. I asked on another forum about storing RA4 chemicals and was advised to use PET1 bottles for the developer (which I do and it keeps perfectly). I assume that is a ph issue? And not sure if it also applies to B&W developer.

I store the fixer and stop in old plastic washing liquid bottles.

I'd advise against using glass bottles. They are lovely until you drop one and find yourself standing in a room full of chemicals and broken glass...probably in the dark!
 
I use Asda plastic bottles. The ones that the 1L sparkling flavoured water comes in (although if I only did 120 film and not 4x5 occasionally, I would use 500ml bottles). The different flavours all have different coloured tops, which helps to stop me messing it up. Red top for developer, yellow for stop, and purple for fixer. I don't tend to use the red one though as I just mix Rodinal or HC-11 as a one shot soup for the session and ditch it. Stop and fixer seem to last forever so they're just stored in a washing up tub in the kitchen cupboard along with all my spare double dark slides, dev tanks, thermometers and dark tent etc.
 
Kei said:
I use a variety of glass bottles, primarily 2.5L that used to contain film cleaner. I also have smaller 500ml/20fl.oz bottles that I transfer to when the level gets low enough in the larger bottle.
Click to expand...

Nice still life :)
 
FujiLove said:
I use HC110 syrup which is mixed one-shot, so no storage issues. You can keep that stuff pretty much anywhere and it doesn't go off, just goes a bit darker. I asked on another forum about storing RA4 chemicals and was advised to use PET1 bottles for the developer (which I do and it keeps perfectly). I assume that is a ph issue? And not sure if it also applies to B&W developer.

I store the fixer and stop in old plastic washing liquid bottles.

I'd advise against using glass bottles. They are lovely until you drop one and find yourself standing in a room full of chemicals and broken glass...probably in the dark!
Click to expand...

I'm using a 5l mix of ID 11 at the moment and that's mainly the one I'm concerned with at the moment. The one-shot syrup does however sound like a plan for next time.
 
I stored D76 (ID11) in 500ml coke bottles fine for ages with no obvious ill effects.
 
Plastic concertina bottles for the solutions and the original bottles/containers for concentrates ( B&W, C-41 and E6 chems).

All stored under the kitchen sink.

Developer concentrate bottles / containers ....Sometimes, if I'm unlikely to develop for a while, I put glass marbles in them to displace the air so the liquid is near the top. Helps with their "shelf life"!
 
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