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A coat hanger with one clothespin
to hold the film on at the top and another to keep it from curling at
the bottom worked well enough for me for quite some time. In my home darkroom--a
large closet in the back bedroom--there is seldom a need to rush things.
But when I recently purchased a new monolight (a step up from the good
old hot shoe flash I'd been bouncing off an umbrella for years), I didn't
want to wait hours between processing my test exposures and making contact
sheets.
So I invested the 20 minutes
necessary to build a rollfilm dryer.
The design for my dryer is
based on a so-called Rapid Film Dryer I used many years ago while a photographer
in the Navy. That wall-mounted unit consisted of a long metal tube with
a blower at the top. It was designed to dry roll film still loaded on
processing reels. You simply slid the reels up into the tube, fastened
a little latch so they wouldn't fall out, and turned the timer on. Five
minutes later your film was dry.
We preferred this dryer over
our old cabinet-style unit because it was indeed more rapid and, despite
the tight ship our lab's Master Chief ran, it was the most consistently
dust-free. There just wasn't any place for the dust to accumulate. Negatives
dried in the Rapid Film Dryer did tend to curl, but were not particularly
hard to handle because of it and eventually flattened out once they were
archived.
Materials
I happened to have everything I needed to build my own Rapid Film Dryer.
People who live in the country, as I do, manage to accumulate more scraps
of wood, pipe, and other residue from various building projects than city
folk do. I have, however, priced the items for the sake of this article.
You can build this dryer for less than $20 (less than $10 if the local
thrift store has a blow dryer amid its abandoned curling irons and coffee
makers), and, once you have the materials, assemble it in about 20 minutes.
You will need a 1.5-foot length
of 4", light-gauge plastic drainpipe. If you shop in a big warehouse-style
store, you'll probably have to buy at least a 5-foot length. Small hardware
stores will actually cut a 1.5-foot piece. It cost about 85 cents a foot.
You will also need a 2.5-foot piece of 1x4 lumber. I had some treated
1x4 pieces lying around, but any similar board will do. A 6-foot piece
of 1x4 costs about $2.50. A roll of duct tape can cost as little as $1,
depending on where you shop. Touch fastener tape sells for $1.88 in my
favorite hardware store. A 5" piece of corrugated cardboard is usually
free. And finally, you will need to acquire the high-tech part of your
dryer--a blow dryer--purchased new for around $10 or from a thrift shop
for $2 or less. I would have preferred a dryer with a "cool" or "air"
setting. My dryer gets fairly hot, so I always use it on low.
You will need an electric drill
with at least a 3/8" bit, scissors or an Xacto-style razor knife, a wood
saw (if you have to cut the pipe and lumber yourself), and a pencil.
This film dryer is as easy
to put together as it is inexpensive. Draw a circle on the cardboard using
the drainpipe as a pattern, cut it out with scissors or a razor knife,
and set it aside for later. Drill a hole through both sides of the pipe.
You will slide a bolt or pencil through this hole to hold your reels in.
Use duct tape to attach the
drainpipe to the lumber with the bottom edge of the pipe at the bottom
edge of the board and the holes on the right and left--just wrap the tape
tightly around the board and pipe a couple of times.
Positioning the pipe this way
leaves a foot of board at the top for attaching the blow dryer and hanging
the completed rig on the wall.
Place the cardboard disk at
the top of the pipe, position the hair dryer against the board with the
handle facing you and draw a circle using the dryer nozzle as a pattern.
Cut out the hole, slide the cardboard up the nozzle until it stops, then
set the dryer with the cardboard disk attached on top of the pipe. Use
an inch or so of touch fastener tape to secure the hair dryer to the board,
then a strip of duct tape to secure the cardboard to the top of the pipe.
Drill a hole at the top of
the board for a screw or nail, and this lightweight, very efficient piece
of darkroom equipment is ready to hang on the wall. It dries four reels
of 35mm film in about five minutes.
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