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  #1  
Old 11th December 2010, 09:02 PM
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Default Cleaning concertina bottles

Having picked up quite a few concertina bottles from the sets of kit I have bought I need to find a way to clean them. About a dozen of them were easy enough with hot water and a bottle cleaner but there are probably about 10 more that are pretty much caked by crystalised chemicals. Not sure what the chemicals were dev? fix?......

Any ideas?
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Old 11th December 2010, 09:17 PM
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Ian David Ian David is offline
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This is not much help, but I would recommend getting rid of the concertina bottles altogether. I recently chucked out my last one. They are hard to clean, and often end up leaking air anyway. Some good quality glass bottles, or even well-labeled plastic softdrink bottles, will serve you better.

Ian
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Old 11th December 2010, 09:25 PM
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As Ian says this may not be the best option. Concertina bottles are now very dated. There are better containers to avoid oxidation, such as the Mike O’Pray wine box idea or just plain plastic water bottles.
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Old 11th December 2010, 09:35 PM
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What about those 5L water carriers used for camping. Does light affect the chemicals or just air?
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Old 11th December 2010, 11:56 PM
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Soak them for about 24 hours in a dilute bleach solution and that should clean them up

Neil.
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Old 12th December 2010, 12:15 AM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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The common "belief" is that concertina bottles leak air, affecting chemicals. I just don't know. I have a few myself but I tend to use winebags for most chems especially if the stock solution requires more than 1L.

Maybe the makers of concertina bottles didn't properly research their allegedly air leakage bottles but I have seen posts saying that so called PET bottles such as are used for lemonade etc are safer. However it isn't clear to me why concertina bottles are less safe than PET bottles and why air penetrates such bottles. Is it due to the concertina construction?

I await a good explanation with incontrovertible evidence. We are victims of various myths on analogue forums which somehow survive. Just an example is that whenever someone asks about colour neg printing on another forum he will be told that absolute darkness is required and he has to be man enough to get used to this or forget colour printing.

DUKA for one has produced safelights that allow for colour neg printing for years. I have used one myself. It works!

The great thing about FADU is that dogmatic maxims tend not to be subscribed to here.

So those who indict concertina bottles as unsafe may be right but I am unclear as to why concertina plastic remains dodgy.

However I am convinced that if you can fill a brown glass bottle to the top or fill the gap with gas then you can eliminate air intrusion/leakage but unless you can then on glass v concertina bottles my jury is still out awaiting more evidence

Mike
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Old 12th December 2010, 12:19 AM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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Nearly forgot. Fill them with reasonably strong bleach for at least 24 hrs and then use a stiff bottle brush. The bristles get into the crevices quite well.

You may have to do this twice. When nothing except bleach comes out you have probably succeeded

Mike
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Old 12th December 2010, 12:28 AM
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Cheers, will give it a try.

Are the chemical affected by light? Could I use a camping water storage container for stock ID11 for instance. Making 5L at once means lots of bottles!
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Old 12th December 2010, 09:19 AM
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You could do this but be careful about putting chemicals into drinking water containers for obvious reasons.

With the concertina bottles I used to use them when I was doing colour for my colour chemicals and I found they worked well and never experienced leaks. The reason I haven't got them now is the sealing washers in the bottle tops eventually gave out and I couldn't make or source a satisfactory replacement that was air tight - so they got pensioned off.

Neil.
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Old 12th December 2010, 09:27 AM
TonyMiller TonyMiller is offline
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I've started using one batch of fixer over a couple of printing sessions and my concertina bottles come in useful for temporary storage - a couple of days at most.
When I started darkroom work a few years back it seemed like concertina bottles were the thing to use - and most of the darkroom suppliers stock them. Then you read the forums and learn otherwise.
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Last edited by TonyMiller; 12th December 2010 at 09:34 AM. Reason: deleted a line which was tosh!
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