Quote:
Originally Posted by gainer  While you are about it, add 8.8 grams of ascorbic acid and 6.6 ml of TEA to the liter of working solution without sulfite and check the activity.
Meanwhle, I cut the Metol to 0.01 moles /liter (3.44 grams), used 8.8 grams/l of ascorbic acid and 16.6 grams of sodium metaborate, and the activity is almost what it was with 0.05 moles of Metol. |
Sorry, I didn't do exactly this, but I did do two things that proved to my satisfaction that my MC-TEA only needs more alkali to activate it, and that sulfite doesn't have any particular role in getting the metol-ascorbic acid synergy going.
Instead of adding two teaspoons of sulfite to a liter of working solution I added two tsp sodium metaborate. The resulting developer was extremely active, developing Delta 400 to a contrast index of 1.9 in the same time it takes the sulfite mixture to get to 1.2. However, shadow detail was very poor, so I'll stick with the sulfite formula for now (especially since I have 5 lbs of the stuff).
I also tried using double the amount of sulfite (but no metaborate), which gave me about the same development time as the original amount.