Morse G3 Dev times

[rosie16]

Hi Everyone,

I am new here, so I apologise if this is going over old ground.

I've recently been experimenting with a Morse G3 tank I bought on ebay. Before this I've only ever hand processed b+w film in a lomo tank, with good results, although I became frustrated at having to cut 100ft rolls of 16mm into 3rds to fit it all in! my lomo tank is quite small, a bit broken, and they seem to be increasingly rare and expensive to buy. So this rewind tank came up and I went for it.

So far I've used the Morse a total of 3 times. with wildly varying results. I am wondering if anyone else has experiences to share - particularly with reference to Developing times. I've pretty much been guessing at the times I should use, I haven't tried reversal processing yet - just neg.

this is what I've got so far:

1. developed 50ft of standard 8 Orwo 54 in XTol for 8 mins. - This came out beautifully!

2. developed a roll of 35mm ilford HP5 400 in XTol for 8mins. - This also came out pretty well, but rather scratched every 5 or 6 frames. I think this is due to 'cinching' which I've read about and it sounds bad, but I don't know what it is exactly.

3. developed a 100ft roll of Kodak 7222 16mm negative film. The film had been sitting in a box on a shelf since a holiday to Scotland 2 years ago, but usually that kind of thing is okay...if you don't mind some imperfections. I thought to be on the safe side I'd give it a total of 10mins. ----

Anyway, this came out dreadfully... there is barely an image, and what there is appears milky grey and very faint. I am wondering if I loaded it incorrectly, (I don't remember!) with the emulsion facing inwards, and this has contributed to the poor result. Or could it just be that it was sitting on that shelf too long? Does a sort of milky grey usually mean it's under developed? or Over? or perhaps it is a problem with the stop or fixer? OR 100ft is just quite a lot of film to get through the chemicals, and it needs way longer then 10mins?

Any ideas and comments would be greatly appreciated. I feel great things could come of this morse tank!... if only I could learn to harness its power. hmm.

[woods01]

Hard to say without seeing a frame to judge. Did you use fresh chemistry? B&W tends to be quite durable with age. 2 years is not really too long a time. I've developed year old film with no noticeable bad results.