Gregory is right.  I found brownish Glycin to work in many instances.
I had to adjust amounts with some of the darker stuff, but once I
determined the proper amount, I made up a load of concentrated
developer and had no problems for at least 2 years, when it was all
used up.  This was for all Glycin developers, as other agents could go
bad sooner.

I recall mixing GLycin as a 20% stock solution that lasted for more
than a decade.  This was severely discolored powder, but mixing into a
stock solution somehow regenerated it.  Someone posted something about
using Hydrochloric or Muriatic acid to get the Glycin into a
concentrated solution first.  I don't have the posting saved on this
computer, so I have to guess it's gone.  Try a usenet search for
Glycin and someone named Brand;  possibly Walt Brand.

*Voila*!

Found it in an old text directory.
=======================================================
From heildriver@my-deja.com Thu Dec 30 19:56:13 1999
This is a reply from another thread (on phenidone and catechol) to a
question about dissolving the notoriously hard-to-dissolve developing
agents Glycin and Phenidone. This is of course strictly for those
diehards who like to compound their own developers; it may be that
several will find this little Heloise-hint useful.

Apparently, many are making up percentage solutions of these two
agents
because they are so @#$% difficult to dissolve in normal developers at
normal alkaline pHs. This leads to inevitable trouble with keeping
properties and of course it's one (or two) more bottles cluttering up
the darkroom.

The secret is to dissolve these intractables in a little acid
(muriatic
acid from the hardware store is easiest to obtain, though a little
scary
to use), preferably an acid with no buffering ability (like muriatic
acid, which is dilute hydrochloric acid) so it won't mess up your
developer's pH so much. 10cc of muriatic will easily dissolve enough
of
either agent to make at least a liter of working solution.

I'll try to find my source for this trick and post it here, along with
some actual amounts.

And don't tell your wife that you can use the muriatic acid to clean
the
commode, or you'll be drafted. My advice is: Feign total ignorance.

Walt "Heloise"  Brand

From rlv1@mindspring.com Sat Jan 01 13:06:30 2000
OK, Walt, you've had one century to come up with an answer,  I'm
losing patience!  ;-/

On Fri, 31 Dec 1999 00:56:13 GMT, Walt Brand <heildriver@my-deja.com>
wrote:

Now that's the stuff I've been lusting for.

I'm assuming you don't just drop the measured amount of Glycin into
10cc of concentrated Muriatic acid.  That's what my grandfather always
called Hydrochloric acid and I never handled anything that was dilute,
except after my own dilution procedures.  If there is a standard
dilution of Hydrochloric that is called Muriatic, I'd love to learn
about it.

For storage, do you add Sulfites, or is the acid sufficient?  How long
has a solution (10%, 20%?) stored without oxidation?  Etc.
 
Of course I am really lusting to find out how to make those percntage
solutions of Glycin to help simplify my own small chemistry space in
the kitchen.  With the kids getting manual 35mm cameras for Xmas and
recovering my bulk loader, I'm in for some developer mixing activity
again.

Thanks; feigning is one thing I do well where the housework is
concerned.  Since my wife left, it doesn't seem to work very well,
though.

Robert L. Vervoordt
<rlv1@mindspring.com>

From heildriver@my-deja.com Mon Jan 03 20:27:37 2000
In article <386e3e4f.1268975@news.mindspring.com>,
 rlv1@mindspring.com wrote:

Like Marty McFly, I'm back, in time.

with some actual amounts.

A little note scribbled in my materials notebook (the one that
explains
the difference twixt all those chemicals, made up of densely
overwritten
pages of the old Dignan Newsletter) says "Merck Index" as the source
of
the "dissolves in acid" trick and cites the 1938 Crabtree book as
saying
that Glycin dissolves at the rate of 50g/liter, but is that acid or
alkaline, who knows. Shouldn't be a problem in any case, is my
feeling.

You might could do that..

I was told it was roughly 1:1 concentrated HCl. But you'd titrate your
way to the alkaline side in the working developer by experiment. I
used
pH papers.

Always, always add sulfite, bisulfite, vitamin C, &c.

As I said, I was fundamentally against the making of stock solutions
of
developing agents; it seemed to be just another way of asking for
trouble, so I don't know how long this acid type would hold up. But
since both agents are fairly stable, I'd say just about as long as any
other stock solution, maybe longer, because of the acid.

Sounds like fun. If you go the stock solution route, let us know about
keeping properties.

Walt Brand

From ???@??? Mon Jan 03 23:15:43 2000

From joe@nospam.com Tue Jan 04 20:54:11 2000

Then you probably won't like my slapdash/titrate approach. I'd take a
nice round 43.2 ml of water at about 70F, add a nice round 10ml
cylinderful of muriatic, dissolve everything but the alkali and
benzotriazole, top up to 60ml and jam that stopper on tight. With the
alkali dissolved in about 450ml of water, I'd add 10ml of concentrate
to
it and stir like mad, being careful not to aerate, and pour that baby
into my Kindermann. Generally I had enough of a well-buffered alkali
that the 2ml of muriatic didn't affect the pH. You might want to do a
series of tests to see how little acid it takes to dissolve a given
amount of phenidone or Glycin. The way I worked, it didn't much
matter.

longer, because of the acid.

Voila! You've answered your question.

Cool! Let's use some of those color-coupling agents in a future
experiment to produce true dye images. I've got some of those color
developing agents myself. They must be 30 years old, and I never got
around to using them.

From cshope3980@aol.com Tue Jan 04 22:36:04 2000
Does anyone know if the 45A color head is okay for doing b & w
printing?
Someone said that it would not allow "Burning" or "Dodging" because of
its
pulse output light source. Anyone know, pls email or respond. Thank
you.

Chris S.
cshope3980@aol.com
==========================================================

Robert Vervoordt, MFA

Yep.  I never got any use out of brown HQ powder.  Glcin, though came
back like a champ, though, when I got into a hgly alkaline solution.
I remember the stuff sizzling when the powder hit the Lye.  So, maybe
you can try putting into some strong alkaine solution just before
diluting to working strength and see if that saves you a bundle on
some small and high priced quantity of new powder; sure to start going
bad in a year or less.

I wonder if Pat Gainer's antifreeze stock slution methods would work
here?  Worth a try especially if only using it for paper.  I used it
for film and paper, so maybe I'm brash.

Good luck,

Robert Vervoordt, MFA