Response to Fix hardener necessary for sheet film?

The answer is "it depends..."

Most people seem to be able to get away without hardener, but in some areas, the water supply defeats the film's (or paper's) built in hardeners and makes hardening fix a necessity. I've got the misfortune to have such a water supply and need to harden all gelatin-silver materials. If your unhardened prints stick to the drying screens, or your unhardened negatives frill at the edges or show weird drying marks no matter how carefully you treat them, you need to use hardened fixer. If you don't see any problems, great.

PS: Even in my water, negatives developed with pyro are safe in unhardened fix because of the pyro's tanning

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