Railfan Technology > Darkroom accident

Hey All, For those who dabbled in Dark Room activities back when film was the s&*t. One night while doing some darkroom work on my B&W negs, sometine during the night we had an "accident". The darkroom was in the basement of a friends house. We were developing some film and printing off of negatives, all B&W. For whatever reason, we left a tray of fixer on a table, which got spilled. The tray, and this is one of those "only happen in your worst expierience type situations"  spilled onto  the floor above the darkroom and found it's way to the table where we left the negs.. . When it spilled, it found it's way to the floor and the nearest Heat Duct/Riser. The liquid then flowed thru the duct and down into the basement, where we left our negs out. The Fixer then proceeded to leak onto quite a few negs and dry before we discovered our accident. Yeah I know, hard to believe, but this is actually what happened. My question is, Is there anyway to save the negs? The ones in question still have some of the fixer, which has dried over the past 30 years or so. Can you "wipe" the negs with water to remove the traces of fixer that are on the negs? I know PS can do amazing things, but will it help with this? Lots of spots on them. Thanks for any possible help with this old problem.  Ben

I wouldn’t wipe it. Dried fixer crystallizes and can be quite “gritty”. I would snip off a test frame and just try rinsing it in a water bath, then a Photo-Flo follow-up then simply hang it to dry. Hard to say what 30 years of fixer has done to the emulsion but a regular rinse may do the trick. 

Films and prints should be subject to hypo
clearing agent. If not, you may get stains
where the old hypo was still on the material.

It's a little late for the hypo clearing agent
now ;-)

John.