Clothes Pegs.
 

Do not use wooden spring clothes pegs to hang your negatives up to dry.
Get plastic ones, or better still a proper darkroom set with the spikes or serrated grips.
WHY?
Beacause I once hung up a roll of 35mm film to dry, using wooden clothes pegs at each end.

It was the normal thing to do in those days. Recommended in books and magazines.

Trouble was my wet hands soaked the top peg. After a few minutes the peg had warped with the damp, and opened enough to let the film drop into the bath.
In those days we used VIM Scouring powder to clean the bath.
I ended up with sandy grit embedded in the emulsion.

Sad thing, it was full of pictures of the interior of a very old building that was to be locked up at the end of the day and later demolished.

No second chance.

Get some real darkroom clips.

Good point. However for some people who may have to be careful with their money when starting out may put off buying proper clips due to the extraordinary high cost. Typical £6 - 8 is what I have seen.

I used to have a couple of small hooks in the doorframe to hang 35mm film from until I could get hold of proper clips. Even making use of small metal bulldog clips are cheaper and work well.

Ihave a line in my darkroom, and use bulldog clips threaded on the line though the oles in yhe top, 12 cost me around £7 at WH smith's a good few years ago nowm but the drip the film well, also they are great for hanging prints on to dry, You could use the same clips for hanging film almost anywhere,
Richard

I dry negs over the bath suspended from a retractable "Tidy-Dri" washing line using regular clips. I agree about the price of them considering what they are but like many things they're not not a bulk sale item so no economies of sale.
I also have some plastic clothes pegs but with one half extended into a hook which I think are for LF negs and FB prints hung by the corner.

One of the pros of using toothed clips is that (if you buy the right ones) they are wide enough to cover the width of the film. I find that this helps to dry the film flatter. And of course they are very secure -- the ones I use have a locking tab so there is no doubt when they are engaged and holding fast...virtually no chance of letting go....

All good responses, but John King brought me back to reality.
I tend to forget that there are plenty of folk having to be careful with their hard earned cash.

I remember in my early days looking at catalogues of gear that I could not afford at the time, but managed well enough without. Nowadays I still look at catalogues, but begrudge paying through the nose for something that I can make myself. So when I can, I do.

My first developing dishes were my mums old pie dishes. OK for postcard prints.One of my earliest diy projects was big developing dishes.
Wooden frames nailed at the corners, and polythene sheeting draped over them and held in place with drawing pins.
Not as convenient as shop bought big trays, but they worked for years until I found some big trays in a sale.

Cheers.

Search on line for a 20 peg clothes/sock dryer, you can find them for as little as £1.29. Great for hanging up film or small prints.Toolstation sell Xpelair vent tubing 150mm x 3m for about £3.50, this can be clipped to some of the pegs and dropped around your film to keep the dust off.

Paterson make film clips with spikes in them - which give a very definite hold of any film.

They sell them as a pair - a normal film clip and a weighted film clip (for the bottom of the hanging film to stop it moving too much).

Its a good investment - they last a life time.

Probably available second-hand on ebay too.

Never drop wet film - it attracts dust/grit/muck from all corners of the universe in nanoseconds.

An empty wardrobe makes a good film drying cabinet if you don't stretch to a film drying tent/cabinet.

Martin

Used clip, both Patterson or similar can be had used from Second Hand Darkroom when they re-open in February. No need to fight for them and get ripped off on E Bay.

A word of encouragement should you be unfortunate enough to drop a film when it is still wet. DO NOT attempt to wipe anything off or even touch the emulsion side of the film - you will scratch the emulsion, so instead, with care rewind the film back onto the spiral and re-wash for 5 mins. Inversion agitation is probably the best 6 x 30 seconds should do the trick.

If you have difficulty in rewinding the film onto the spool try immersing the spiral and the film into water and load the spiral when fully wet. You will find that it slides on remarkably easily.

I use normal sized bulldog clips with no problems.