2 Bath Developer

[Jollybox]

Hello and good day to wherever you are reading this from. I have in the past had pretty good results from using a home brew film developer from Barry Thornton. It is a two bath mix. Recipe: Bath A Metol 6.250g Sodium Sulphite 85g and H2O to 1 litre. Bath B Sodium metaborate 12g and H2O to 1 litre. Barry recommends 3min per bath @21deg C - No wash/fix/stop/ etc. between baths.
I was wondering if any contributors have had experience using this combination. Recently I have found that I have needed quite ‘hard’ paper filtration to get the contrast I would like in printing from these negatives. It might be the case that I need to increase the times of the baths somewhat but before I do that I’d like to see what others have tried.

[joncallas]

How does this compare to Diafine, or some other split developers? Sounds interesting -- I have some Diafine which I have not mixed up.

Are you using it only for paper or for film, too?

[Jollybox]

Thanks for the reply joncallas, I have not tried any other split developers. Am only using it for film. My usual combination used to be Fuji's Acros film and this developer. In the recent past (when I ran out of Acros..) I have moved to HP5 and dilute Rodinal. My supply of OEM Rodinal is running low, so was re-thinking the two bath again.

[RetroFred]

G'day all...
Your Thornton's 2-Bath experience is a somewhat common occurrence. You might find this information provided by John Finch to be of some help in your quest for more negative contrast when using this developer. Follow this link for his advice - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ-TTh19zvQ

Fred

[Jollybox]

Thanks Fred, that was very interesting.. renewed my interest in BT 2bath no end, I will have to take tomorrow off work to shoot a test roll

[RetroFred]

Grin! At least you are clear about your priorities! Hopefully your new experience with Thornton’s 2 bath yields the result you are looking for…

Fred

[Keith Tapscott.]

Hello and good day to wherever you are reading this from. I have in the past had pretty good results from using a home brew film developer from Barry Thornton. It is a two bath mix. Recipe: Bath A Metol 6.250g Sodium Sulphite 85g and H2O to 1 litre. Bath B Sodium metaborate 12g and H2O to 1 litre. Barry recommends 3min per bath @21deg C - No wash/fix/stop/ etc. between baths.
I was wondering if any contributors have had experience using this combination. Recently I have found that I have needed quite ‘hard’ paper filtration to get the contrast I would like in printing from these negatives. It might be the case that I need to increase the times of the baths somewhat but before I do that I’d like to see what others have tried.

Two-Bath developers can be useful for scenes of a very high brightness range to control excessive contrast, but for general use I think that a well established general use film developer will produce more satisfying results for most subjects.