Finally, at last!
I just finished my very first Caffenol adventure, and what an adventure it was!
First, I didn't have any powdered Vitamin C, so I took some old blueberry flavored vitamins I had in the pharmacy that were well past their prime. I figured that it wouldn't hurt any. So I crunched 10 tablets in the mortar. At first, it smelled really nice, so I was happy. But once I put them in water to dilute out the ascorbic acid, I discovered why these are meant to be eaten and not diluted! You should have smelled that. The closest thing I could find to that smell is located somewhere in the digestive track, and let me tell you, it's not at the beginning or at the end!
Once that was properly diluted, I removed all the particles that were in the already brownish liquid. I had to filter it twice because all the starches would plug-up my filter with fine particles. Once that was done, I added the sodium carbo. Since I didn't know what kind it was but I know I've had it for a while, I just treated it as a decahydrate. The temperature of the liquid did go up by a good 10°C like expected. But the smell also went from bad to worst. Once it started cooling a bit, I added some iodized salt since I didn't have any KBr, kept stiring that definitely brown and murky liquid.
This is when I added the instant coffee. Now what I thought was a foul smelling concoction turned into a definite loose your lunch type of smell. Even with the small extractor fan I have, I stunk-up the lab pretty bad. I'm still wondering out of all the stinky stuff I've done in that room if this came before or after sulfide sepia toner! It was really nasty.
I had to filter it two times again as there was still quite a few floaters in it. Once I was done, I adjusted the volume to 300ml and got ready to develop.
On this job, for the first time in years I actually dropped the film on the ground. The reel's bearing jammed. I had a hard time locking the lid on the tank.
After all this, the developer was still at 22°C. I just said what the heck and started developing. I did a short pre-wash just in case. I did the 14 minute with a first 30 seconds of agitation and 3 inversions every minute.
The smell in the darkroom was still bad enough that I couldn't smell the acetic acid stop bath! Fixed like usual.
I just finished washing the film. It looks like there is a good fog layer on it.
All in all, it took me more than 2 hours to get the roll processed. I still can't smell anything... but at least my fingers don't smell anything anymore... at least not that I think of...
