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Old 18th November 2021, 07:03 PM
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Default Wetting agent or c41 stabiliser

I have run out of wetting agent but I have some c41 stabiliser. Would it do any harm to my B&W film to use the C41 stabiliser as a wetting agent?
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Old 18th November 2021, 08:54 PM
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Default Final Bath

It probably wouldn't hurt B+W film and I would think it would do the job but wetting agent is quite cheap anyway.
It won't do anything to help preserve a correctly fixed and washed silver image silver image.
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Old 20th November 2021, 07:40 AM
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Before I had wetting agent, I used a drop of dish soap instead. Worked just as fine!
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Old 20th November 2021, 08:39 AM
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Not a good idea! Soap contains microscopic undissolveable solids which can leave a scum on the film.

Ask anyone who has to clean a bathroom basin. I noticed this when I started to use shower gel instead of soap, the shower didn't need cleaning nearly so often. I still use soap in the hand basin and that needs cleaning more or less daily.

Even washing up liquid is not good. That contains a high concentration of salt.

A bottle of wetting agent although it has a 'use by date' can largely be ignored and will last for a very long time.
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Old 20th November 2021, 09:10 AM
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First of all, I've only been developing my own film for a couple of years now, so my track record isn't too long.
Meaning that my negatives haven't been around for long enough to see any long-term consequences of it!

But I've read about other people using it for decades without issues, so I thought, why not.
I used washing up liquid (in the Netherlands they're the same thing, washing up liquid and dish soap, I'm not sure about UK).
Although I can imagine that there are ingredients in that which might not be ideal, when using a small drop in eg 0.5L of water, visually this worked exactly the same as wetting agent in my case.
So if you have nothing else at hand I wouldn't worry too much about using it again.

But I agree, wetting agent is really inexpensive and a small bottle lasts almost forever, so I prefer to use that as well!
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Old 20th November 2021, 09:47 AM
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From what you say dish soap and washing up liquid are definitely not the same in UK. Dish soap to me means a tablet of hard soap that everyone used until a few years ago. If I am mixing it up forgive me.

Wetting agents. I am using the Kodak variant and the bottle must be 5 years old now and still doing the job and still have over 3/4 left. Some wetting agents claim to have anti-static properties to reduce dust but if you are careful there is no need.
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Old 20th November 2021, 10:03 AM
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Funny where there's only a small sea between us, but the products we tend to use in our daily life appear to be totally different
In Holland I've never seen tablets of soap for manually washing the dishes. It's always been liquid in a bottle for as long as I can remember (I'm 40 now).
But possibly we've used those tablets in the past as well!
We do have those small hard tablets for the dishwashing machine though, but that's really nasty stuff what's in those, I'd never ever soak my film in those...

I've bought a small 100ml bottle of Adox Adoflo about 2 years ago and I think it will last me at least another 5 years before I've used it up.
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Old 20th November 2021, 11:42 AM
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Dish soap is what the Americans call washing-up liquid. A bar of soap was either used for washing hands or the body (largely replaced by liquid soap in a pump-action bottle or shower gels) or, in olden days, for doing the laundry, and there were also soap flakes or washing soda for that.
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Old 20th November 2021, 12:58 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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I wonder if the confusion arises because our U.K. hard soap tablets or bars are usually placed on what we call a soap dish when the soap is not being used so dish soap i.e. soap kept on a dish

Certainly soap used to wash dishes i.e. plates, bowls from which we eat food has been liquid for a very long time in the U.K.

Mike
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Old 20th November 2021, 04:12 PM
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Ah but THOSE soap bars we do know!
I wouldn't use them as wetting agent though...
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