[pure-silver] Re: Using a long Beseler drum

  • From: "Richard Knoppow" <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 16:40:00 -0800


----- Original Message ----- From: "Philippe Gauthier" <pgauth@xxxxxxx>
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 3:50 PM
Subject: [pure-silver] Using a long Beseler drum



I currently own a Unicolor roller that I use with 10 inch drums. I load it either with 4x5 or 8x10 sheet film and the loading pattern, with the grooves inside the tube, is fairly obvious.

It recently occurred to me that such a tube would be useful for large size paper as well (after all, they were made for color paper, right?) and that processing 16x20 sheets would require less chemistry in a large tube. I just bought such a large tube in swap last Sunday, but it is a Beseler tube and the way it's meant to be used isn't so obvious. Inside the tube, you find a long, slim, black plastic part (I'm really at loss for the right English word, here) that is attached to the bottom. It seems that you should pull this part, but it doesn't move. Inside the tube there is also a smaller, loose cylindrical container that you cannot remove because of the plastic thing.

What's that? How do you use it? A 16x20 sheet fits the tube quite well (no paper overlap) even if I don't care about the thing and the container. Will these accessories allow me to use larger size paper (with possible overlap) or are they used when loading the tube with chemistry? Unicolor drums keep the paper/film away from the chemistry when you fill it, but it seems that the Beseler tube cannot do that - or perhaps there's a technique I can't figure out... Any hint would be appreciated.

Other question: is it possible to load this tube (which is about 22 inches long, if you don't include the cap) with larger paper, like 20x24, using the plastic thing as a kind of separator, to avoid paper overlap?

PG

If this is like my 11x14 Beseler drum it has a trough in it to hold the chemistry before starting to agitate. The trough is attached to the bottom of the drum which is removable, that is, both ends can be removed. Removing the trough makes it easier to load the drum especially when a number of small prints are to be processed.
The drum has a fixed, permanent separator along the side and grooves for removable separators. The removable separators are used for smaller prints. If the drum is complete there should also be small separators which clip onto the fixed separator to keep which are shorter than the drum apart.
Once the paper or film is loaded into the drum the caps on both ends are attached. Then set the drum on the "feet", that is the square parts of the end caps that stick out. Then pour in the chemistry. This will stay in the trough until you begin to rotate the drum. The instructions are to roll it off the feet and all the way until it comes back onto the feet, then keep repeating this back and forth.
The instructions for the 11x14 drum give the capacity of the trough as 3 ounces when a pre-soak is used and 5 ounces when dry paper is used. You can measure the capacity of the trough on your drum. At a guess its double the 11x14 amounts.
I also have Unicolor drums. I use these occasionally for large sheet film. What I discovered is that when a motor base is used there is not enough sideways agitation to remove developer reaction products from the line of rotation so that there are streaks along a line extending on both sides of bright highlights or objects. Occasional sideways agitation will prevent this. The effect was particularly noticable for Rodinal. The effect is evidently not significant for color prints, perhaps because they are developed to completion or perhaps because the developers have different characteristics.

---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

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