The big bottle on the sink line smells sulphurous tonight and I don’t trust it. I know the clip test in theory — drop a bit of undeveloped film leader in, time how long it takes to clear — but what clearing time do we treat as the cutoff before we mix fresh?
House rule: fresh solution clears a leader in about 45 seconds. Once the clip test takes twice the fresh time, it goes down the silver-recovery jug, not the drain. The smell alone isn’t the tell — the stopwatch is.
Also worth fixing FILM for twice the clearing time, whatever that currently is. If the bottle’s at 90 seconds clearing you’re fixing for three minutes and that’s still fine — just slower. I labelled the bottle with the last test date, do add to it.