Whoops! D76 in cold water

[joeyjoe]

I grabbed some D76 Gallon sized powder mix to get started on some developing and I've forgotten that you need to heat up the solution to get it to dissolve properly. In my excitement, I'd put everything in the datatainer cold and shook it up only to find plenty of floaties. :bang:

I'm not sure that I have another container this large that I can heat up, and I can probably run some warm tap water onto the bottle to warm it up a bit.

Any Ideas?

Thanks!

 

[sevo]

I grabbed some D76 Gallon sized powder mix to get started on some developing and I've forgotten that you need to heat up the solution to get it to dissolve properly.

Says who? On my 1l cans, there is merely a pictographic "stir the contents into 800ml of tap water, fill up to 1l when completely dissolved", and I've always done that successfully, with cold water. Warm water may save time stirring, but D76 is pretty quick dissolving as far as developers go, so why bother?

Sevo

 

[joeyjoe]

huh. well, that sounds like a good deal. it's 1:00 AM here, so I'll just hit the sack and continue in the morning. I've got my film reels loaded so all the hard part is done and I'll just soup them up when I get up tomorrow.

 

[joeyjoe]

Well, for the record, I gave it several hours, and then warmed the jug in the sink for a while and inverted occasionally and it managed to dissolve. Negs look good so far

 

[Dwig]

...I'd put everything in the datatainer cold and shook it up only to find plenty of floaties. :bang:
...

Shaking developers to mix the powders is a very, very bad thing to do. ANYTHING that causes more oxygen to dissolve in the water will always shorten the life of the developer. Developers should always be mixed with a stirring rod or spoon making all effort possible to avoid disturbing the surface as much as practical.

 

[joeyjoe]

Thanks for the tip, I had completely forgotten about oxidation of the chemicals. Fortunately, I've got a batch of about a dozen rolls of film, so I will likely use up most of the developer in the next 2 weeks or so.

 

[R.MacDonald]

Shaking developers to mix the powders is a very, very bad thing to do. ANYTHING that causes more oxygen to dissolve in the water will always shorten the life of the developer. Developers should always be mixed with a stirring rod or spoon making all effort possible to avoid disturbing the surface as much as practical.

Never been an issue for me. For years I shook the bottle to mix my D76. If you're worried about your developer oxidizing that rapidly, to the point it would exhaust your developer you'd probably be better off using HC-110 or Rodinal. Concentrates that seem to last forever, mix and store even better.

 

[Ronald M]

I can`t believe some of the advice I read on the internet.

 

[sevo]

Shaking developers to mix the powders is a very, very bad thing to do. ANYTHING that causes more oxygen to dissolve in the water will always shorten the life of the developer. Developers should always be mixed with a stirring rod or spoon making all effort possible to avoid disturbing the surface as much as practical.

That is more true for high dilution developers - which don't survive storage in partially filled bottles either. The only difference between gently storing it in a bottle and shaking it in the same is that it will absorb all contained oxygen instantaneously in the latter case while it will take an hour or two in the former.

But D76 can stand a lot of oxygen, very much more than you can measure by the bottle - it was originally intended for large stand tanks, which have an open top all day throughout working hours. I haven't ever had it deplete due to oxidation under common small tank conditions (i.e. stored in closed bottles and used four-shot). It is rather hard to imagine situations where you could oxygen damage it by shaking.

However, I avoid shaking any process chemistry for a different reason. Just like fix, most developers will eventually form a precipitate, and you might shake up some of that. And mud particles that have come to stick to the gelatin at process time are nasty, much worse than dust - they will affect the entire film, cannot be removed by any means and are particularly unpleasant to touch up.