Topic: scales for measuring chemicals...HELP

[Diane Peterson]

Some of you talented people must mix your own developing chemicals..can one of you tell me what kind of scale I should get?..I am really interested in doing this but don't know what is a good reliable brand for a scale..

[SLVR]

I went to my local surplus store. 15$ later i had a great scale. Through ive never used it because i ended up deciding against splitting up my powders.

Mines a small digital scale. Does grams and ounces. Other than that and a reset button its pretty simple.

[Diane Peterson]

thats about what I needed to know..I guess if it has those attributes I am safe! Thank you!

[LT]

Diane - if you are thinking of mixing small amounts of developers etc, you'll likely need to measure in 0.1 of a gram.  Something the usual dietary scales don't do.

I use a set of digital Salter scales, but I don't know if they are available in the States? The version I use isn't available anymore, but there must be something similar available still.

[Diane Peterson]

Leon,I thought you would be familiar with the type of scale I need..I will continue to look..I've looked on amazon but it is difficult for me to understand exactly what they are selling..if it's exactly what I need..Can you give me a price range? maybe that will define my search a bit more?? I just purchased a book entitled "Photographic Possibilities " and I am dying to try some of the receipes..

[Francois]

You definitely need milligram precision. It all has to do with error levels. small volumes need high precision. Kodak on the other hand probably measures everything in killogram. Since they produce so much, they can get away with a small error.

Check that evil auction site for Lab Scale. You can get some that are made in China for very cheap nowadays.

[LT]

here are a lot on the US amazon site.  Just be aware that you need a large enough weighing surface to cope with the chems you are weighing.

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&rs=&ref_=sr%5Fnr%5Fi%5F2&keywords=milligram%20scale&qid=1263853211&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Amilligram%20scale%2Ci%3Aoffice-products

[Diane Peterson]

Leon and Francois..thank you both so much..I think I am in the ball park of knowing what I am doing now!

[Francois]

Or you can use a bigger mixing bowl

When I was in high-school, we used to measure everything in little cupcake papers... just a trick.

[Diane Peterson]

great idea!!