I haven't smelled dektol since I was a student... 11 years ago for Xray, and 32 years ago for photography,  but I swear I could smell it there for a moment.

Good ideas, though my bathrooms are tiny.  Might be able to set up in the garage though.

Garages work well enough I know of at least three YouTubers who have garage darkrooms.  Seems to  me to be a PITA to light seal, but as long as you remember to disable the door opener (assuming there is one), so you don't get any surprises, there's the advantage of space.  Potentially the disadantage of a shortage of outlets, but darkrooms don't need too many of those.  Enlarger (which plugs into timer if you have one), safelight, potentially an immersion heater of some kind if you want to do color (needs 100-102F), inspection lamp (needs to be closer and brighter, likely whiter, than the main white light), possibly a dorm fridge to store bulk buy materials like film, printing paper, etc.

Dektol isn't the smell I usually associate with darkroom, it's the acetic acid in stop bath and the slight sulfur tang of fixer.  But yes, Dektol is pretty much the basic -- if you have a supply of Dektol and fixer, you can do what you need to do.  Dilute 1+9 for film (sharp, no grain reduction) and 1+2 for paper.  Not my favorite film developer (I prefer Parodinal -- made from acetaminophen -- and HC-110), but it does work well.

Ugh.  Have to work today, so out of time.  Get back to my other threads this evening.

In reply to Ardenas Barehand (msg # 366):

Working on a painting.  Hopefully be on tomorrow

Will post tomorrow.

Life a bit odd at moment.

Dad is back in the hospital, so I will be a bit spotty for a few days.

Hope things improve again.

I may miss a morning or afternoon here and there over the next few days; construction on my darkroom should be mostly done today and then I have to help move stuff in there -- after fighting with FedEx to get the two kitchen carts I ordered (for enlargers) off their delivery truck.  They've been out for delivery the last two days, only to land back at the FedEx facility, quite possibly because they train their drivers to give up at the slightest impediment.  Also have to finish building the window insert (caulk up with black caulk, paint outdoor side black, glue foam in place with more caulk, weatherstrip, install, and paint room side to match walls).  Still, hope to be able to at least develop film in there (i.e. room light tight and water working) by Monday.

Then, next weekend, I get to rearrange things in my office space and clear out a bunch of junk, set up my partner's old desk -- and probably get volunteered to help with other stuff, like setting up partner's new desk.  It's all worth it, though, I should be able to make B&W prints by the weekend after.  Color will take a bit longer...

Affects:
Ardenas Barehand
Mario Crowfoot
Aldous Hack
Evelina Grattan
Elaina Grattan

In reply to Ardenas Barehand (msg # 370):

shipping has been slow as molasses. i'm still waiting on my damned percolater coffee pot, i ordered a week ago to ship. been that way with all my mail order purchases the past couple months.

Ugh.  Very apt description.  One of the worst possible ways to make coffee.

Pour-over drip is best, in my opinion, followed by automatic drip and espresso.  Given automatic drip machines are inexpensive, usually available locally, and can be had with internal clock/timer (so my coffee is ready when I stumble into the kitchen about 4:05 on a weekday, and the machine will automatically shut off the warmer after an hour or two), that method wins in my house.

I have a little espresso machine (fully manual, pump fed) that works well, but due to space it's "put away" and now I'm afraid the insert for the filter has gotten lost (filter's in the dish rack, the insert isn't in it; hopefully it's in there too, or in the sink).  Without the insert, the whole machine is useless, as there's no way to tamp the coffee and the machine is a long discontinued model.

I agree, but it's really the only way to make coffee, in the bush. I can perk a great cuppa java.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:52, Thu 07 May 2020.

Actually you can steep coffee in the field. Get the water just below boiling or boild it and add a bit of cold water to stop the boil, then add coffee. You can just pour the grounds in or warp them in cheeses cloth or a very clean sock. Let it steep about 5 minutes or so, then IF you just poured the grounds in, pour a small amount of cool water in to settle the grounds. My old mess sergeants also suggested a couple of egg shells after you broke the eggs for breakfast. The egg whites tends to gather up floating grounds too. I prefer the cheese cloth or pour through filter, which really is easy to use as long as you have two containers, one with boiled water and one for coffee.

Anyway, just other solutions ... some folks just boil grounds adding water and grounds as needed during the day ... I can't recommend that as coffee though. Scissors beside the pot to use to cut the flow off is a bad sign.

At imagined impediments as well.  See... the drivers are given a route for the day and are told "get these deliveries done by X o' clock".  The schedule is supposed to take into account all stops, traffic, flights of stairs, and even leave wiggle room for things like "broken elevator and 10th floor delivery".  In practice however...  if your stop is after the 'midway' point and the driver is running late (because the algorithm scheduling program is garbage), and your package cannot be left at the door, most drivers will practice ye olde "stop, hop out, run to door, lightly knock, run to truck, leave before resident can get to door" in order to make up for time and just mark your package 'undeliverable'.





That isn't coffee.  That's punishment.

It is possible to make tolerable coffee in a percolator, but not easy.  I've done it, over a campfire.  The trick is knowing when to stop, and it's sooner than most would think.  Boiling coffee is very bad for it, so you want to take the percolator off the heat as soon as there's color in the dome, don't keep perking until it looks like coffee in there.

There's so little coffee showing in the dome that any color there at all is dark enough for correctly brewed coffee; continuing past that point is just continuing to boil the coffee and overextract the grounds -- and making the coffee bitter and burnt tasting.

If you can boil water, you can operate a pour-over filter.  Melitta (and I presume other vendors) make one that just fits on the top of a coffee mug.  Boil your water, take it off the heat, wait a few seconds for the boil to subside, then pour it slowly over the grounds in the paper filter.  Fill up the filter, and stop pouring to let the coffee run through.  The #2 filters used in most of the single-cup brewers are likely to require filling the filter a second time to get a good sized mug filled, but you'll get good coffee, presuming you start with good quality and reasonably fresh grounds (no more than a week since grinding, ideally ground fresh from beans roasted within the past couple weeks).

A single-cup cone filter and small spice grinder (which works fine for a couple cups worth of beans at a time) probably weigh less than a percolator and will make much better coffee.  The grounds and filter are fully biodegradable, or can be burnt in the fire (the latter probably better, coffee grounds are harmful to some animals) -- or can be packed out, if you're a no-trace camper.  In the latter case, drip coffee also uses less stove fuel than percolating, as the water doesn't have to be held on the boil.

Permanant bronze mesh filters for pour over are available and fairly cheap, they do acquire bitter oils after a point though.
Good luck with your roughing it!

When I've gone camping I take two camp pots, one to boil the water in, one to make the coffee in.

Granted I've been spoiled last several camping trips as I was running a LARP and we had a pair of guys who lived close enough they'd go home each night and return at day break... with several gallons of Dunkin Donuts coffee cartons to bribe the GMs with.

I of course approved of coffee and donut bribery and made sure they got extra exps.  This wasn't hypocrisy, we had a pro-bribe the GMs and Narrators policy after all.

As it s Mother's day this weekend I will be scarce until Monday. Be good

The permanent filters are, in my experience, inferior to paper filters, and fragile enough that it's easy to destroy one when trying to scrub away the accumulated oils.  Paper filters trap more of those oils and keep them out of your cup -- which is better for your health, as well (the fatty acids the paper traps are bad for your cholesterol balance).

None the less, if cowboy coffee is all the coffee I can get, I'll drink it.  I'll look around for some sort of milk product (even powdered milk, if it goes that far) and artificial sweetener (or sugar, if I'm desperate -- 10 grams isn't that much, on a short term basis).  Good coffee, I can and will drink black.

i take mine black, with sugar. if i'm making iced, i add whole milk.
though, i like milk and sugar in my hot tea, and iced chai, is a whole new can of worms..

My drinks in order of amount per day...

5L Red Rose Tea, black
2.12L Coffee, tannish (1/2 & 1/2†)
0.5L Water, tap
.00001L V-8‡  Usually heated with butter, sriracha, and a mix of herbs and spices.

These are estimates as some days I drink a little less (because it's a slow day so I'm not talking as much) or I drink more (busy day with lots of talking and/or I'm out mowing lawns for a half the day - which I do once a week for cash).  But on average, yeah I drink that much.  Untreated/undiagnosed diabetes makes one very, very, very thirsty.




† Despite being lactose intolerant.  Powdered crap tastes even worse than diary does these days.  And I've yet to enjoy any dairy substitute liquid (I'm mean I don't enjoy dairy either, but it's better than non-dairy or black).

‡ Every so often I want a 'soup bowl' of V-8.  But because I'm thrifty I always buy it in the biggest bottles... and it won't store for long once opened, so I'll burn through a 64 fl oz bottle in week or two, like once every two-three months.  I like it as a tastier, thinner version of tomatoe soup.


And yes, I do know roughly how much I drink, not because I deliberately track it, but because I drink from specific bottles, in set amounts (2 bottle of coffee, 3 bottles of tea, 1 bottle of water) so it's real easy to track retroactively.  The V-8 is harder to figure because it's sporadic and I don't keep track (also I don't so much 'drink it' as I 'eat it' as soup with grilled cheese sammies, I mean, I drink it and dunk the grilled cheese in it... look you get the idea).

In reply to Jareth Mooncalled (msg # 382):

I tend to have artificially sweetened dairy products that have been minimally exposed to coffee that is frequently decaffinated, along with pale milky red rose or chai tea, and a crap ton of diet decaffeinated iced tea. I am told to avoud stro g doses of caffeine as it can detract from the effectiveness of my assorted meds, and am a teatotaler for the same reason.

In reply to Narrator (msg # 383):

Combo plate today, painting plus ikea shelf assembly

when i was growing up, in the winter, we'd heat up tomato juice, with a dash of worcestershire, and a pat of butter before we'd hit the toboggans. my aunt liked to drink spicy v-8 and beer, to make "snappy toms". i have an older roommate who does the same, for his hangovers. i don't drink much myself, anymore. i'd gotten that all done with by the time i was 20, after about 5 yrs of heavy drinking/partying. i like to drink a couple 32 oz's and call it a night, although i do like to smoke my cannabis. :)-~~

In reply to Chye Isuel (msg # 385):

Just so the New in Town crww is clear, the wild goose chase you went on was because of a critical failure on a lore roll. You did end up learning a little (Rosewood from another Pixie) and from the hag (low reaction roll; she could have given more) but you know more about the factions of Faerie, and have a handful still of magic hazelnuts.  Carry on.

When your pagan god has to come down and chastise you about your Sacrifriday conduct, you know you done fucked up...

(a mini-comic by the Mighty Yaba, McNostril himself... Yann Ben Alluch)

https://twitter.com/mcnostrilc.../1258805716485316612