Author
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Topic: Film Guard - First Impressions
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Hugh McCullough
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 156
From: Old Coulsdon. Surrey. UK
Registered: Oct 2006
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posted June 14, 2007 03:53 PM
Filmguard, developed over many years by a professional projectionist, and used in many cinemas. Probably the best film cleaning, and lubricating fluid available. My method of using it is to use an old, well washed, linen handkerchief.
First place some sheets of newspaper on the table. Then some kitchen towel folded over about three, or four times. Place the handkerchief, folded in two, on the towel, and spray all over with the Filmguard. The newspaper, and towel, are to soak up any excess fluid. Run the film through the cloth using a hand rewinder at your normal rewinding speed. After about 200 ft move the handkerchief to a fresh clean portion. Continue as above until the whole reel has been treated. If you like you can repeat the operation again when rewinding the reel back. Wash handkerchief in warm soapy water, rinse well, and store in an old film tin, or similar container. Make sure to label the tin as you do not want it used for any other purpose.
Kitchen towel is not advisable as some makes are quite fluffy, and will leave fluff on the film, and probably cause 'birds nests' in the gate.
Filmguard evaporates very slowly when starved of air, e.g. when wound on a spool. Exposure to air, and the heat at the projection gate does speed up evaporation, but still at a very slow rate. I find that once every two years treatment is OK on films that have been projected more than a dozen times.
-------------------- EIKI Ex 6100 xenon machine.
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Brad Miller
Administrator
Posts: 525
From: Dallas, TX, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted June 21, 2007 01:12 AM
No FG doesn't dissolve tape splices. The only way I can imagine that happening would be if you completely ignored the instructions enclosed with each bottle and went insane with the application amount. Remember a quart of FilmGuard will outclean a gallon of any other cleaner. To properly clean about 12,000 feet of 35mm film, it takes about an ounce!
Bart, there are many transfer houses using FilmGuard, as well as a few rejuvenation centers using the product with their Lipsner-Smith machines. I would however recommend before putting any product on a customer's film that you check first.
The ideal way to apply FG is to use a Kelmar film cleaning machine. Kelmar only makes them for 35mm and 70mm film gauges, but as you can see below with a couple of bolts and a dozen washers, they are effortlessly converted to run 16mm or 8mm film gauges. Pictured below is a 70mm film cleaner modified to run 16mm film.
The nice thing is that you load up the "media" cloth on it, thread the film through it and as the large film drum spins, it turns the takeup spools of the media so the film is always presented with a fresh piece of cleaning cloth without ANY human effort whatsoever. These machines were initially designed to mount on top of the projector as an "inline" film cleaner to clean the film while it is running, but you can adapt them to rewind benches like was shown here.
If anyone wants to go this route, let me know as I will sell you a 3000 foot roll of 1 inch wide media cloth ridiculously cheap. (The normal rolls are 2 1/8 inch wide, but since my manufacturer's rolls are 10 feet wide and they are slit down from there, there is normally just enough on one end during slitting to make a 1 inch wide slit of media fabric. At one point we were going to make 8/16mm media pre-rolled, but it just wouldn't be profitable. Still I have lots of these rolls sitting around that could only be used by a 16mm or 8mm film collector.)
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