I'm going to give this a try. I already have HC-110 and Ilford Rapid Fix as well as FP4+ and RC paper. The Methylcellulose is on its way.
I'll report back,
Richard
I made a start on this over the weekend with some progress - but not success yet.
Firstly, I found it hard to mix the methylcellulose with the monobath. It seems as if the monobath causes the dissolved methylcellulose to precipitate out into a stringy white mess. I eventually found I could make it work by adding the monobath very slowly and stirring well. I stopped adding just before the goop precipitated out - but I'm not sure if I have adequate concentration of monobath.
The next step was to reconstruct the experiment shown on the web site. I used Post-it notes to make the pods - relying on the post-it note glue to pop open under pressure - this worked well for a quick experiment. Eventually the paper would disintegrate if not used right away. However I got no image on the negative or the fixed out paper.
I determined that the developer was not active enough. I figured that the solution may not be alkaline (basic) enough for the developer. Perhaps my Ammonia wasn't as strong (I used Walgreens "Nice" brand clear ammonia - can't find strength on the bottle or online.) I increased the ammonia in the monobath and did a quick test by just pouring it onto an exposed negative. It worked - and now I got a decent negative.
Trying the full experiment again yielded some sort of negative but only an extremely faint image transferred to the paper. I switched to paper negatives to save on film, and still got the same results - a decent negative but only a very faint transfer. I will go back to trying more film in the next few days.
At this point I have a lot of variables. Do I need to continue to play with the monobath composition? How should I change it? The guy who posted the instructions clearly made it work - so I shouldn't stray to far from what he did.
I'll try to do some more on this when I get a chance.
Richard