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Archival permanence

Washaid’s final wash is five minutes and twenty on one page

Shows that HARMAN / Ilford’s December 2017 Chemical Sundries sheet publishes two different final running-water wash times for the fibre-base Washaid path on the same page — twenty minutes in the processing-sequence table and five minutes in the Optimum permanence sequence — while that page’s selenium-toner sequence uses a thirty-minute final wash; that the July 2010 Rapid Fixer sheet and the October 2013 Multigrade FB Classic sheet match the five-minute final wash, not the twenty; and that Kodak AJ-3’s Hypo Clearing Agent wash reduction for double-weight paper is twenty minutes, matching the table rather than Ilford’s “optimum permanence” final-wash figure.

Published by AnalogFixer ·

Ilford’s washing-aid product has one published job on fibre-base paper: a short first wash, a Washaid bath, and a final running-water wash. On the December 2017 Chemical Sundries sheet that introduces Washaid, that final wash is twenty minutes in one place and five minutes in another — on the same page, under the same product, at the same 1+4 working strength and overlapping temperature band. Neither figure is marked superseded.

A third sequence on that page ends in thirty minutes after selenium toner — the same sundries page whose selenium permanence framing is treated in Published sheets disagree on what selenium toner protects.

This is a document comparison, not a wash recipe. The useful fact is that the manufacturer’s own Washaid page leaves the final-wash duration open, and that other Ilford sheets examined here and Kodak’s Hypo Clearing Agent summary do not close it the same way.

Twenty minutes in the sequence table

HARMAN technology’s Sundry chemicals for processing black and white films and papers fact sheet, footer-updated December 2017, gives Washaid working data on its final page: dilution 1+4, temperature range 18–24°C (64–75°F), “Time for FB paper” ten minutes at 20°C (68°F), and “Time for film” two to three minutes at 20°C.

Immediately under that product block it states that “the processing sequence is given in the following table,” with columns for fibre-base paper and film:

Step FB paper Film
First wash, fresh running water 5 1
ILFORD WASHAID 1+4 10 2–3
Final wash, fresh running water 20 5

The water-temperature note under the table puts paper washing at 18–24°C / 65–75°F and film washing within 5°C / 2°F of process temperature. So the fibre-base path the table itself publishes is five minutes of running water, ten minutes of Washaid 1+4, and a twenty-minute final running-water wash.

Fork showing Washaid sheet printing five-minute wash for paper and twenty-minute wash for film on the same page.

Five minutes under “Optimum permanence”

Lower on the same page, under the heading “Optimum permanence for fibre based papers,” the sheet defines optimum permanence as minimum residual silver and minimum thiosulfate, then publishes an “Optimum permanence sequence”:

  1. Fix in Ilford Rapid Fixer 1+4 for one minute with intermittent agitation
  2. First wash in fresh running water for five minutes
  3. Rinse in Ilford Washaid 1+4 for ten minutes with intermittent agitation
  4. Final wash in fresh running water for five minutes

Processing conditions are again 18–24°C / 65–75°F including wash water. The first wash and Washaid step match the table. The final wash does not: five minutes here, twenty in the table above.

The sheet does not say that the optimum-permanence sequence replaces the table, that the table is for a different paper weight, or that one figure is a minimum and the other a commercial default. Both sit on page 4 of the December 2017 revision. The later heading uses the permanence language; the shorter final wash is the one attached to that language.

Thirty minutes on the selenium sequence

The same page also carries an “Optimum permanence sequence with selenium toner.” After Rapid Fixer 1+4 for one minute, that sequence includes a selenium-toner step that names working-strength Washaid as the toner vehicle, then a Washaid 1+4 rinse for ten minutes, then a final wash in fresh running water for thirty minutes, again at 18–24°C including wash water.

That is a third final-wash figure for a Washaid-involving fibre-base path on one page: twenty (table), five (optimum permanence without toner), thirty (optimum permanence with selenium toner). The selenium path is not a ruling on which of the first two is intended for untoned prints; it is further evidence that final-wash duration on this sheet is sequence-specific and not a single published number.

Other Ilford sheets match five, not twenty

Two other Ilford documents examined here publish the non-selenium Washaid route with a five-minute final wash and do not reprint the twenty-minute table figure.

The July 2010 Rapid Fixer fact sheet, under washing fibre-base paper with Washaid, gives five minutes in running water above 5°C, ten minutes in Washaid 1+4 at 18–24°C, and five minutes in running water above 5°C. It frames that route as reducing washing time and saving time and water relative to its sixty-minute plain wash — not as the “optimum permanence” heading used on the sundries sheet.

The October 2013 Multigrade FB Classic technical information sheet publishes the same five / ten / five timings under “Optimum permanence,” with the whole sequence including wash water at 18–24°C, after Rapid Fixer or Hypam 1+4 for one minute. Its selenium sequence likewise ends in a thirty-minute final wash. For the untoned path that is the subject here, Multigrade agrees with the sundries “optimum permanence” five-minute final wash and with Rapid Fixer’s five-minute final wash — not with the sundries table’s twenty. Those same two sheets also disagree on plain-water wash time before Washaid enters the picture; see Two Ilford sheets disagree on fibre-base wash time.

So the twenty-minute fibre-base final wash is not a figure the Rapid Fixer or Multigrade sheets examined here corroborate. It appears in the Chemical Sundries processing-sequence table and is left standing beside a five-minute optimum-permanence final wash on that same page.

Kodak’s double-weight figure matches the table

Kodak Alaris publication AJ-3, How to Process and Print Black-and-White Film, February 2016 / Revised 2/16, never publishes Ilford’s three-step Washaid table. Its Hypo Clearing Agent summary says the product “reduces the wash time to 5 minutes for films, 10 minutes for single-weight papers, and 20 minutes for double-weight papers,” at a 1:4 dilution, and is not recommended for RC papers that already have a four-minute wash.

That twenty-minute double-weight wash reduction is the same duration as Ilford’s table final wash for fibre-base paper. It is not the same duration as Ilford’s “optimum permanence” five-minute final wash. AJ-3 does not call the twenty-minute figure an optimum-permanence sequence, does not cite Washaid, and does not adjudicate Ilford’s page. The same AJ-3 sheet and sundries page also carry the hypo-clearing versus hypo-eliminator naming split treated in Ilford Washaid is labeled eliminator and clearing agent. The alignment is of published minutes for a washing-aid / hypo-clearing final water wash on double-weight or fibre-base paper — not a claim that the products are identical or that Kodak endorses either Ilford figure.

What the sources examined here do not settle

The Chemical Sundries sheet does not explain why the processing-sequence table and the optimum-permanence sequence disagree on the fibre-base final wash. Rapid Fixer and Multigrade do not mention the twenty-minute table figure. Kodak AJ-3 does not cite Ilford’s sheet. No document examined here attaches a residual-thiosulfate test method or numerical limit to these Washaid final-wash times.

What the documents do support is narrower. On one Ilford Washaid page, fibre-base final wash after Washaid is published as twenty minutes and as five minutes, with a selenium sequence at thirty. Two other Ilford sheets match five for the untoned Washaid route. Kodak’s Hypo Clearing Agent summary matches twenty for double-weight paper. A reader who treats “the Washaid final wash” as a single Ilford number is reading past a conflict the December 2017 sundries sheet leaves on the page.

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