I grew up with two photographer parents that built a house around photographic printing. I was looking through their exposure notes a bit ago and as long as you can get sub second you should be able to get some pretty consistent results.

They did color, so when printing there was no such thing as a safelite. I can still vividly remember being that "can I help?" age and setting the timers for each color, loading in the paper in complete darkness, firing up the enlarger, and then feeding it to the auto processor. It was certainly an interesting way to grow up.