Drying 120 - longitudinal curl?

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Kiloran
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Joined
Aug 14, 2006
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Location
Southampton, UK
I'm having terrible trouble getting my 120 to dry flat. Final rinse is distilled water plus Tetenal Mirasol to the recommended 1:400 dilution. I'm using the above because I have very hard water and and old draughty flat which means dust control is an issue.

Film is curling vertically whilst hanging, there's enough tension to twist the bottom weight and it curls to the point it can even put a kink in the centre of the neg. I expect a bit of residual curl from the fact it has been on a reel but what is causing it to curl at right angles to that curl? Seems to be particularly bad with Neopan 400, the Acros I developed at the same time on the same reel has only a slight curl. The result is a neg strip that looks like you've taken the short ends of the roll and twisted them in opposite directions :bang:

Hoping that a few hours reverse rolled on a reel will correct this but I'd prefer to avoid this issue at source if I can. The next roll I'll try drying naturally to eliminate the rapid drying effects of the Mirasol but I was wondering if anyone else had seen this.
 
Cut back on the hardener in your fixer, should help with reducing curl. I had some 810 sheet film curl almost this bad, cut the hardener in half and films dried nice and flat.

I've found 120 film the most suseptatble to curling- Bergger film has been the 'curliest' in my experience, but I've not shot the Neopans in 120. Come to think of it some of my Neopan 35mm does have a pretty good curl at times.
 
I'm not using any hardener (just fix with Ilford RapidFixer), think it must be a characteristic of Neopan 400. The Acros that went through the same chemistry/wash came out pretty flat (certainly flat enough to scan straight away).
 
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