Topic: Darkroom plastic

[chris667]

Hello everyone.

I will be here for a long time after Gwin's operation. And I need to get printing!

I've got the space and the equipment. The only thing I'm missing is the curtains!

Would this stuff work? It's much cheaper than darkroom blackout material. There's enough in a 10m roll to double up everything I need to cover.

ebay

Failing that, any other inexpensive alternatives to blackout materials? I've calculated it will cost at least £100 to do it with the stuff that's sold for darkrooms, which at the minute really ought to put it out of my budget. :-(

[Pete_R]

How permanent is it going to be? In my first darkroom I made a cover for the window that could be put up and taken down. It was just a wooden frame covered in hardboard. The board was oversize for the window recess and the frame fitted into the recess so making a sort of light trap. Painted black around the edges it worked pretty well. If you are planning on sticking something permanently to the window, black bin liners work if you use a few layers (might depend on your brand of bin liners though).

[Francois]

If you go to a fabric store, ask for material for some hotel blackout curtain material, you will get something that is very opaque. If you put it on curtain rods you will be able to let light in when it's not in use.
That with a box around the window frame should be plenty good.

If you want to make things extra light tight, you can fasten the material directly to the box and overlap the fabric in the center. Use some nice curtain pulls to keep them open for ventilation when not in use.

[Bryan]

When I was working in Alaska one summer I couldn’t sleep at night because the sun was in the window all night.  I taped tin foil over the window, it worked really well.

I use some heavy black fabric my wife had let over from a sewing project to block the door to my laundry/Darkroom.  I put some grommets in it and some hooks over the door.  There are probably several options at your local fabric store that will work.

[EarlJam]

Blackout curtain material seems to run about $5.00/yard, in 54" width. Specialized materials, like Duvetyne, are much more expensive. One of the upsides to "normal" blackout curtain material is that you can get white on one or both sides, which helps overall darkroom lighting conditions under safelight. Here are a couple of US examples; I suspect you can find the same locally.

https://www.joann.com/roc-lon-budget-blackout-white-white/2117232.html

https://www.amazon.com/Blackout-Drapery-Shading-Waterproof-Sunshade/dp/B06XRYLV1S

[Jeff Warden]

Boy I'm feeling like an amateur right now. My first darkroom was 100% blacked out and I was very careful to make it so. But in my current home I just prop a cardboard box in front of a window and job done. I only print at night so I'm sure that makes a difference, but for sure this darkroom isn't all that dark and it seems to make no difference.

Oh, and the box was free.  :-)

[Francois]

Chris: can you post a picture of the window in question?
Maybe we can design something really cheap and convenient for you...

[chris667]

Here it is! Two (sort of) skylights, a glazed door, and a fake door to the outside.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gktzc8n36hcdzkm/AABTHb6IgPBeHhi_yYTPBmsHa?dl=0

[Francois]

The door shouldn't be much of an issue. If light comes through there, just a bit of weatherstripping will do the trick.
For the skylights, you can make some sort of drawer so that the panel slides sideways into place. For the panel itself, you can use pretty much anything. Black corroplast comes to mind. So does black painted corrugated cardboard. If you laminate the cardboard so that the corrugation goes in both directions it will become super robust.
If you want to go for cheap, you can also make some sort of "hammock" out of blackout material. If you staple some felt to the side of the skylight in a way that the hammock will rest on it when drawn tight, it should be OK.

Now for the door to the house, I would definitely go for curtains with some pull backs. If you don't want to damage that nice door, you can always hang it on the door frame...

One thing I did in my garden shed a long time ago is just nail a block of wood on each side and hang a piece of wood on top of those. When you're done, you just remove the rod and everything is back to normal (yes, I had curtains in my garden shed)...