Chemistry Experiments, part 2

After some reading it turns out I may have made a stupid error with my first batch of developer. I added all of the ingredients at once after weighing them out, rather than adding them individually in the order specified, that's what you get for not taking hte whole book with you (mind it is an extremely large and heavy hardack) and just jotting down the indegredients. It seems that importantly Metol, on eof the developing agents I was using, will be rendered useless if it is added to an acidic solution which is essentially what I was doing by putting everything in together. So the developer AGFA 124 may not be as uselss as I thought.

After some digging around I managed to find my much more compact, though less comprehensive 'The Print' by Mr Adams and started again with Kodak D-72 (Dektol substitute) remembering to add the ingredients in order, apart from a small pinch of Sodium Sulphite with the Metol to help prevent oxidisation, et voila! 1L of fully working D-72 for £1.70, not much cheaper than buying packets but at least I don't have to make 5 litres of the stuff!

I then printed 6 copies of the same image on Ilford Multigrade as I usually use graded paper and I'm not 100% on the whole variable contrast idea. All 6 of the images received the same exposure and development, only the filtrtion was changed. I couldn's spot any difference between the images, double checked the filters were actually engaged and they were, extremely confused!