tale of woe: steel reels!

There should be slack in the wind. Every few wraps, push the towards the center and it should easily go. If not, the film skipped a grove and frames are touching.

Use old Nikors or Kindermans. the rest are garbage.

Eventually you will find yourself with a film half pushed into a plastic reel and after three tries you can`t can`t get it to load. What do you do then?
 
marke said:
maddoc: What are these Masuko reels and loader you speak of? Is there a link to a website to learn more?
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Mark,

unfortunately I found only a website, which is in Japanese but from the photos there you get an idea. Here is the link:

http://www.kpsnet.co.jp/contents/body/original/originalbody/masuko/masuko.html

What I like about their tank designed for 1 roll of 135 film is the tank-size of ~500ml. So I can use Rodinal in 1:100 with the required minimum amount of 5ml Rodinal concentrate per roll of film.
 
Ronald M said:
...
Eventually you will find yourself with a film half pushed into a plastic reel and after three tries you can`t can`t get it to load. What do you do then?
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Thats basically what happened with the delta 3200 when I ruined a couple of frames. I cut the film in half and loaded the other half in another reel I had 😉
 
marke said:
Chris: I'm not sure how your tanks compare, but my ss tank uses about 250cc for each 35mm roll, where as my Arista Premium tank uses 375cc per roll. That's considerably more, don't you think?

dfoo: It helps to tilt the ss tank slightly as you pour, otherwise the air doesn't seem to escape fast enough for the rate that the liquid is going in.
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I measure the developer for 300ml (easier to calculate especially with Rodinal), my Nikkor steel tank fills up with just a little bit overflow, so I figure the actual needed volume is less than 300ml.

As for the clip, my experiences echoes the others'. That clip is useless, just have the film inside the center space and when you start spooling, the tension between the film and and the inner "wall" of wires will keep the film stay put.

One more thing that was a big deal to me is to pay attention where the reel is facing, I usually make sure that my left hand fingers can touch the ends of the reel wires when the reel is in my left palm. Otherwise, the wrong direction will make the film fight the groove instead of following it.

Hard to describe, but hard to mess up also (after you've got it) 🙂
 
On the rare occasion that I only develop one roll in my tank (built for 2) I still use 500 mL of solution (ie fill the tank until it is full and no more can be poured in.) This way, I never worry about there being an air gap that can adversely affect the development. This is just a habit I have gotten into in the intrest of consistency.
 
Al Kaplan said:
It's best to always have two reels in a two reel tank even if one is empty to keep the reels from sloshing around too much.
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and this I believe is the primary cause of uneven development along the film edge. If the reels can't slide up and down the tank, then there should be minimal if any surge.
 
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