Terra cotta from '58 is basically a stale cracker at this point. That homeowner got mad at you for saving him from a $4,000 reline job, which is a wild way to say thank you. I've pulled brushes back out looking like they went ten rounds with a dust buster on liners that felt solid two seconds before. Forty extra minutes beats explaining to a guy why his chimney is now a pile of red sand.

Heard a guy on a podcast talk about this... some old school developer from the UK who said stop bath is mostly a holdover from when people reused fixer until it died. If you're using fresh fix each time or close to it, water works fine for most films. The acid stop can actually cause little pinholes in some emulsions if you go straight from a strong developer into it too fast. Six rolls is not luck, that is a pattern. Tucson water is hard as heck though so maybe that is part of why the rinses work so well for you.