hi -
i recently "won" a kit that contains a pair of unicolor drums, and the roller. i have the leaky ends figured out, but it is the "piston" on the roll film drum that is giving me trouble. from what i understand it is one of the older drums with the "piston" for allowing the drum to take 1 reel or 5 ... well, umm ... the piston works, and keeps the reels in the tank, but unfortunately the developer likes to leak out of the tank since the seal doesn't really like to hold the fluid in the tank.


i have a rubber band from a head of brocolli
i figure it is a cheep o-ring!

any suggestions would be helpful!

- john

John:

Over the years I have acquired 8 of the #320 Unicolor Films Drums and I numbered them from the beginning using 1 inch White stick on numbers with the oldest drum being #1 and the newest drum being #8.

The reason for this being that the older drums (#1 through #4), by virtue of the rubber seal in the piston becoming less "supple" needs a thin film of "Vaseline" to form a water tight seal to prevent leaks out the back end of the drum.

This works for the most part, but care must be taken NOT to use more than the required amount of solution for the reel size and the number of reels used, and to store the piston in the drum in the relaxed position so as not to compress the seal while in storage.

Needless to say, I use the newer drums more, but have the older drums handy if needed for multiple processing jobs.

Hope this helps.

graflite