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.


Mark