The short answer? DON’T DO IT!!

OK, with that out of the way… so a few nights ago I re-fixed and re-washed a couple of rolls that hadn’t been fixed properly first time around. I loaded the cut strips onto my plastic reels and did them in the daylight tank, no problem at all. I decided to leave the film on the reels to dry, and shook as much of the water off as I could.

First, there are drying spots. This I expected and they’re not too hard to gently wipe off, but it’s worse than I usually get with the film hanging up and photo-flow used in the final wash, and harder to remove.

That’s not the big problem though. The big problem was that one strip had a big wet patch in it where there was still water trapped between the strip and the reel. The bigger problem was that 3 other strips had stuck together in the middle, obviously having been touching while drying.

But don’t panic! All is not lost.

First up, I soaked the partly dry strip under the faucet until it was uniformly wet again, shook it off and this time hung it up to dry.

Secondly, I gently soaked the stuck strips in water. After a minute or two, they came unstuck with no sign of emulsion damage. Phew…crisis averted. Same thing with those, washed and hung to dry.

After a couple of hours they were dry again and ready to be re-sleeved. Yes, they were insanely curly length-wise, but across the width of the negative they were fairly flat. A couple of days in the sleeves being gently flattened has the curl tamed again, and in any case that kind of curl is well handled by the scanner’s film holder.

No more drying on plastic reels though!