Create a Simple Film Drying Cabinet
Published on January 31st, 2012
Shooting analogue film can pose challenges outside the exposure triangle and one of the most frustrating can be the post-development drying of processed film negatives. More than occasionally my 120 film negatives have been impacted by particles of dust that appear as unsightly white spots after scanning.
You can Google film drying cabinets – they are EXPENSIVE. So I went hunting for a simple idea to create a cost effective solution.
To make my film drying cabinet I cut four large squares from the end of a disused roll of dog fencing wire from our back yard. I used the excess wire at each join to connect the structure together. This formed a stable wire tube frame. I then joined a smaller section of the fencing wire across the top and bottom of the tube – this will give me somewhere to hang my rubber band & top peg. The 120 film will hang from that peg with a second peg at the bottom of the film to keep it straight.
I needed to cut out a door large enough that I wouldn’t scratch the unwound wet roll of film as it entered or was removed from the cabinet. So I used wire cutters to remove all but the top and bottom rectangles in a vertical line and taped over all joins and wire ends to further ensure that my negatives would survive.
A photograph should give you an idea – the red tape covers joins along the back of the wire tube where the coil was brought together; black tape was used on the top and bottom joins; and, yellow, green and blue tape was used around the front entry doorway.
