Alternatives to Brown Plastic Jugs

"SofaKing" wrote

My local photo place wants $9 a pop for those 1 gal. chemical jugs! I feel
it's a little much for 25 cents worth of plastic. Are they magic or
something. Couldn't I use rinsed out antifreeze jugs or windshield washer
jugs? Do they have to be opaque? Thx.

I can't think of any good reason why anybody would want or need
to use gallon size anything for keeping darkroom chemicals.
Just in case somebody else has thought of at least one good reason,
I suggest the gallon jugs in which distilled water is packaged. For
79 cents I've a jug and one gallon of distilled water.
Purely a technicality: Volumn goes up by a power of three while
surface area by a power of two. In brief, the low surface area to
volumn ratio of large containers favors longer chemical life. That
is with all things being equall which is far from being the case.
From Google enter, Tri Ess Sciences . They have a large selection
of bottles, jugs, and jars. Also they have a variety of caps,
including Polycone, and lids. Dan

"SofaKing" wrote in message
My local photo place wants $9 a pop for those 1 gal. chemical jugs! I feel
it's a little much for 25 cents worth of plastic. Are they magic or
something. Couldn't I use rinsed out antifreeze jugs or windshield washer
jugs? Do they have to be opaque? Thx.


Years ago I wandered into a shop that catered to home brewers (make your
own wine & beer). They sold a variety of sized brown glass bottles and a
nice assortment of caps for really cheap $. You may have bottles like them -
they have the glass fingerhole at the top of the neck. They ranged in size
from 30 oz. up to 160 oz. Of course they were all used. With a little
washing they've become my alternative to the damned expensive brown plastic
jugs.

Doug

doug wrote:
"SofaKing" wrote in message
My local photo place wants $9 a pop for those 1 gal. chemical jugs! I feel
it's a little much for 25 cents worth of plastic. Are they magic or
something. Couldn't I use rinsed out antifreeze jugs or windshield washer
jugs? Do they have to be opaque? Thx.


Years ago I wandered into a shop that catered to home brewers (make your
own wine & beer). They sold a variety of sized brown glass bottles and a
nice assortment of caps for really cheap $. You may have bottles like them -
they have the glass fingerhole at the top of the neck. They ranged in size
from 30 oz. up to 160 oz. Of course they were all used. With a little
washing they've become my alternative to the damned expensive brown plastic
jugs.


Any good homebrew place should be able to get new glassware. The other
choice is to go to the supermarket and walk around. By the time you've
walked up and down the aisles you might have found a bottle in the right
size for very little money. Of course you need to dump out whats in it.

Nick

Dan Quinn wrote:

I can't think of any good reason why anybody would want or need
to use gallon size anything for keeping darkroom chemicals.

I keep Dektol in a one gallon brown glass jug. I usually get to
the bottom before it gets seriously brown. I keep stock HCA in
a four litre plastic jug which used to contain vinegar. I do the
same with dilute photo-flo. Everything else goes in smaller bottles.

One good idea is to make sure that developer and fixer are kept
in very different looking bottles. Everything should have labels
on it too, but just having recognisible bottles reduces the chance
of error.

Plastic pop bottles with plastic caps are good.
Glass bottles with plastic caps are very good.

Peter.
--

On Fri, 9 Apr 2004 00:33:09 +0000 (UTC), Peter Irwin
wrote:

Dan Quinn wrote:

I can't think of any good reason why anybody would want or need
to use gallon size anything for keeping darkroom chemicals.

I keep Dektol in a one gallon brown glass jug. I usually get to
the bottom before it gets seriously brown. I keep stock HCA in
a four litre plastic jug which used to contain vinegar. I do the
same with dilute photo-flo. Everything else goes in smaller bottles.


I have found the best containers yet to keep Dektol fresh are the four
litre mylar wine bags sold by wine making stores. Mix the chemical,
put it in the bag, make sure as much air as possible is removed -easy
to do. I have found a bag of dektol stock solution in the back of a
closet that was over three years old. It still hadn't turned brown and
it still gave very good results when diluted 1:1



Take the " _ " out of to reply

On 4/8/2004 4:07 PM Nick Zentena spake thus:

doug wrote:

"SofaKing" wrote in message

My local photo place wants $9 a pop for those 1 gal. chemical jugs! I feel
it's a little much for 25 cents worth of plastic. Are they magic or
something. Couldn't I use rinsed out antifreeze jugs or windshield washer
jugs? Do they have to be opaque? Thx.

Years ago I wandered into a shop that catered to home brewers (make your
own wine & beer). They sold a variety of sized brown glass bottles and a
nice assortment of caps for really cheap $. You may have bottles like them -
they have the glass fingerhole at the top of the neck. They ranged in size
from 30 oz. up to 160 oz. Of course they were all used. With a little
washing they've become my alternative to the damned expensive brown plastic
jugs.

Any good homebrew place should be able to get new glassware. The other
choice is to go to the supermarket and walk around. By the time you've
walked up and down the aisles you might have found a bottle in the right
size for very little money. Of course you need to dump out whats in it.

Maybe not available at just any supermarket, but those fancy-schmancy beer
bottles with the built-in stopper with wire clamp are pretty good, too. I
remember they used to hold Grolsch. Drink the beer, then store your stuff in them.


--
.... but never have I encountered a guy who could not be bothered
to make his own case on his own show.

- Eric Alterman on his appearance on Dennis Miller's bomb of a show
on CNBC (3/17/04)

On Thu, 8 Apr 2004 18:07:04 -0500, Nick Zentena
wrote:

Any good homebrew place should be able to get new glassware. The other
choice is to go to the supermarket and walk around. By the time you've
walked up and down the aisles you might have found a bottle in the right
size for very little money. Of course you need to dump out whats in it.

I did that with bottles of imitation vanilla when it went on
sale for $.75/bottle and I simply poured the vanilla into a soda
bottle ;)


Regards,

John S. Douglas, Photographer - http://www.darkroompro.com
Please remove the "_" when replying via email

Mark in Maine wrote:

On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 14:17:53 GMT, "SofaKing"
wrote:


My local photo place wants $9 a pop for those 1 gal. chemical jugs! I feel
it's a little much for 25 cents worth of plastic. Are they magic or
something. Couldn't I use rinsed out antifreeze jugs or windshield washer
jugs? Do they have to be opaque? Thx.


A few thoughts:

In my case, I have a permanent darkroom, the lights are on in there
during setup, but when it is unused, or when I am working, it is dark
in there - so dark bottles are probably not all that important since
the room is dark almost all the time.

Having said that - I use a lot of little bottles - for example - I use
HC-110 as my main film developer - I dilute the syrup into the stock
solution strength, then put it into 2oz bottles - brown glass, which I
buy in bulk and they are not expensive (about $0.30 each?). To get
the working solution, I mix one entire bottle with the appropriate
amount of water.

I do a similar thing with Kodak HCA, Dektol, etc, using 2oz, 4oz and
8oz bottles as is appropriate so that for each working session I use a
small number of bottles and never use a partial bottle. Since the
bottles are full, there is little air in them, and I suspect that the
stock solutions might last longer - but I have no data on this.

The main chemical that I do not use as one shot is fixer - this is
because disposal of it in my case is a PITA, so I use it to
exhaustion. For fixer, I use brown glass 1gal jugs. Don't remember
what the 1 Gal jugs cost, but I don't think that they were as much as
the plastic ones that you are looking at.

If I recall correctly, the type of bottles that I use, which can be
found at scientific supply houses are referred to as 'Boston Round' or
something like that - I have found two different types of caps for
these - ones with plastic cone shaped liners, and ones with cardboard
liners - I prefer the plastic cone ones since they hold up better and
probably retain fewer chemicals on them.



Those cones can be removed so you can rinse behind them. Just in case some
chemicals got in and you swapped caps with something different.

A jeweler's screwdriver will slide into the edge and you can pry them out.

Bert

PSsquare wrote:

"Mark in Maine" wrote in message
...

On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 14:17:53 GMT, "SofaKing"
wrote:

Having said that - I use a lot of little bottles - for example - I use
HC-110 as my main film developer - I dilute the syrup into the stock
solution strength, then put it into 2oz bottles - brown glass, which I
buy in bulk and they are not expensive (about $0.30 each?). To get
the working solution, I mix one entire bottle with the appropriate
amount of water.


\Mark,

Mark,

Nice to see a discussion of darkroom practice in the newsgroup. Now, on to
the subject.

Check out this link: http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/hc110/

This presents an alternative to making the first dilution of HC110 and
avoids any aging of the stock solution. My darkroom instructor recommended
it and I have found it very practical. I simply go directly from syrup to
final dilution using 16.1 ml of HC110 in 485 ml of filtered water. I measure
the syrup in a 50 ml glass graduated cylinder, so I am accurate to around
plus/minus .15 ml. After measuring the syrup, I add around 10 ml of water,
cap it with my thumb (wearing a protective glove) and shake it before
putting it in the final bottle. I rinse several more times thru the
cylinder so that I am sure to get residual syrup into the mix. I put mix my
solution in a 500ml water bottle so there is little error and no real
measurement of the water; just fill the bottle to a mark on the neck that
equals 16.1 plus 485 ml of solution. Seems close enough since .15 ml is
around 2%. Any error in measurement is likely less important than
degradation of the developer activity. Use the solution once and discard.
No issue of storing at all.

Also, I have found that the simple 1 liter pop bottles are perfect for my
8x10 trays. Everything is stored in a cabinet in a room that is normally
dark anyhow. So light exposure is at the absolute minimum.

Regards,

PSsquare



I use a syringe, draw the amount of HC110 I need, stick the end of the syringe
in the water and pressure it out. Then I draw in some of the water, pressure
it out to rince the inside of the syringe. A bit of stirring afterwards does
the trick.

Bert

"SofaKing" wrote in message news:laddc.52524$Ig.40384@pd7tw2no...
My local photo place wants $9 a pop for those 1 gal. chemical jugs! I feel
it's a little much for 25 cents worth of plastic. Are they magic or
something. Couldn't I use rinsed out antifreeze jugs or windshield washer
jugs? Do they have to be opaque? Thx.

Air (specifically O2) is probably a bigger concern than light. And
gallon is a large quantity. Even if you make developer in gallon
units you are better off with smaller bottles -- quart or liter. If
you fill them right to the top, the oxidization is minimized and your
chemicals will last longer.

Dark quart bottles are what things like Hydrogen Peroxide come in.
Just about any pharmacy has empty brown bottles in that size they will
sell you.

Here's another trick... The dusters you can buy at any office supply
store contain a heavier than air chemical that is pretty much inert to
photochemicals. If you put a couple of puffs of that stuff in the
bottle, it acts as a float and keeps the bad old air away from the
good old chemicals.