[darkroom] Chems and Paper and Photoflo, oh my!

[Daria Juniper]

Today I picked up the following:
     8x10 Kentmere Matte paper (x100)  -- works out to ~60 cents a sheet.
     T-MAX developer
     Ilford Paper Developer
     Kodak Photo Flo

Okie, so the Ilford Warmtone Paper Dev we have is for special ilford 
paper which comes out ...toned... I know, a surprise huh.. The paper is 
like 75$ a box so I decided to get some normal paper dev we can burn 
through and save the warmtone stuff for if we want to get into 
that...which might actually be nice.

I picked up a 500W light for developers and did some testing, despite it 
being for a similar unit, it does not work well for our unit.  So, I did 
some testing and it would appear a frosted 60W light works best.  So, 
I've replaced the bulb in the enlarger and also remounted the enlarger 
directly to the platform instead of that extended wood stand-off -- 
snugly.  The reason I did this was that there was a very noticable 
keystone effect from the enlarger cantering inward due to it being 
mounted improperly.  So that issue has been fixed and with the new bulb 
and mount, the issue of light barrel and vignette has been reduced to 
the point of being a non-issue.  Which now means we have a nice 
consistent enlarger.

I also mixed up a liter of Photo Flo, which is reusable several 
times...you basically rinse your developed film per usual, then give it 
a soak in the Photo Flo for a short while.....then you string it up to 
dry and such.  The Photo Flo is obviously reusable many times over, and 
you'll find it in the black accordion canister top labeled FLO.

...oh, I put some tin foil around that really small "safe-light" that's 
connected to the timer/enlarger and reduced it's output substantially, 
it's likely actually safe to use now....check it out, let me know what 
you think.

As for future paper purchases I was thinking something liek 6x8 since I 
plan to predominately use medium format, but we will need to order or 
find another source for 5x7 paper as the selection at Downtown Camera 
consisted of basically exactly one type of glossy ilford multigrade paper.

Okie, enough texts.
-Daria