I always use Xtol one-shot, and have experienced failures numerous times. don't you think it odd that there are so many failures reported, from myself, Dan Smith, and others that understand processing techniques rather well? if I had one Xtol failure as someone reported, I would take this quite seriously and ask myself how many failures I have had with other chemistry.(posted 8506 days ago)I know that many have reverted to ID-11, and so I ran a quick test with a roll of 120 TMY in both ID-11 and Xtol. visually on the light table, the TMY and TMX grain in Xtol is considerably reduced and yields densities that scan better on a flatbed.
my hunch is that the clip test is not a good harbinger of success. there is an insidious intruder into the process that causes this failure. how do you explain to your client that you failed because of the 'dreaded Xtol failure'?