Baby and the bathwater. (Emptying trays)

[Maris]

A big tray full of liquid picked up by diagonally opposite corners can crack and actually break. This I have done with an original Paterson 16x20 when they moulded them out of beautiful but rather brittle styrene. Now I pick up full trays by the middle of the long sides, move slowly, and aim for a big wide-mouth jug. Fortunately I have a nice darkroom sink under the maneuvre to catch misses and mistakes.

[ic-racer]

I have always used only 2 liters in a 16x20 tray.

[anikin]

Thanks guys. These are great suggestions!

The trays I got are Vivitar. They appear pretty well made. They even have small notches on the bottom in one of the corners for tongs, so they would not slide into the solution. I only got two trays, so I switched to processing without stop: developer-wash-TF-4 process. Seems to work well so far.

bobwysisyg, I think I have something like that in one of my tool boxes. I just was not sure that I could clean it well enough between chemicals.

cowanw, the super siphon looks fantastic! Amazon has several similar ones listed. They are cheap enough to get one for each chemical. I think that's what I'm going to go with. Does it work well in shallow water? Even with gallon of solution, I have less than half of an inch jiggling space.

Once again, thanks for the suggestions!

[bblhed]

Why not just drill a hole in the tray and install a drain with a valve? Then you can hook a tube to it and drain the tray into a bottle without moving the tray until there is a manageable amount of liquid in the tray.

[anikin]

bblhed, I thought about that, but the problem is that the solution level is usually rather low in the tray. The valve would have to be very close to the bottom to be effective and that is rather difficult to do... Have you done something like that? Can show pictures?

[cowanw]

If you dont have room for jiggling, hold the hose up and fill it with a beaker of your solution, then plug the hole with your finger and drop it below the dish ; finger off and you are good to go. I use it to empty the tray my film washer sits in and it gets it down to 1/8 inch, which will be easy for you to pour or waste if there is to much particulate crap in it.

[MattKing]

Why not just drill a hole in the tray and install a drain with a valve? Then you can hook a tube to it and drain the tray into a bottle without moving the tray until there is a manageable amount of liquid in the tray.

This makes it difficult to stack trays - a real concern for those of us with temporary darkrooms.

[pschauss]

When I first started printing 11X14" I drilled a hole in the corner of each tray and fitted a spigot to it. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...l_Storage.html.

I have since switched to using a print drum however. It uses smaller amounts of chemistry and is considerably faster to set up and take down.

[bblhed]

Drill a hole in the bottom and plug it with a rubber bung, you will have to hang the tray over the edge of your bench while you have solution in it so you don't knock the bung out, but that solves the clearance, stacking and draining problems all at once. As an added bonus you don't have to worry about a valve wearing out or sticking because if a bung wears out you can easily install a new one. Wine comes with rubber corks in it these days, just saying.

[phaedrus]

Put your lower arms along the longer side of the tray and stabilize it's floppyness this way. Move slowly so that you don't start waves in the tray. Put the container in a sink, a funnel in it's mouth that has ridges on the outside so that air can escape. And have a trusting (!) second person hold the container for the first part of the gushing ...