8mm Forum: New to 8mm stuff

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Posted by Josiah Allen (Member # 1855) on December 11, 2009, 09:08 PM:

Hi all! I am new to collecting 8mm film stuff.

I am off to a pretty good start so far. I have a Sankyo Dualux 1000 in perfect working condition (aside form needing a new lamp), a couple of 8mm home movies from the 60s on 400ft reels in the cans I bought from a thrift store, a boxed Kodak Presstape Universal Splicer, a full(?) roll of Kodak white leader in the box and a "Polestar Home Studio" for transferring projection, film slides and photographs to video.

I think I have done well in not paying much for the stuff so far. I paid $1.50 for the projector, $4 for the 2 reels of film, $4 for the splicer with the white leader, and $11 for the transfer box.

I have spotted a couple of Kodak 8mm/Super 8mm projectors around town but the one of two I liked was grossly overpriced for it's current non-working condition. It was a Kodak Ektasound 235 with the manual, priced $30. If it was $5, then maybe I'd get it and try to fix it. I liked the interesting design. If it had worked, I'd have probably paid the $30. It's in an antique store where people rent booths so I can't very well ask if they'll go down on the price.

If I come across a decent priced 16mm projector, I will probably get one of them too.

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on December 11, 2009, 10:22 PM:

Welcome to the forum. My experience with the Ektasound units is not great. I had one as a kid that scratched prints and I wasn't too fond of the fact that if film got jammed it was extremely difficult to resolve being that the take-up is all within the housing underneath. Elmo is a terrific make and so are Chinons if you want to go more economically.

Posted by Josiah Allen (Member # 1855) on December 12, 2009, 10:19 AM:

Good to know for future reference. What about Sankyo? This Dualux 1000 seems very well made and high quality.

It played one reel just fine. The other one... it got jammed for some odd reason.. maybe a bad sprocket hole or two. In my attempt to unjam it, it broke the film. [Frown]

It's an old early 1960's home movie someone did so it's not something extremely valuable or anything but it still made me sad that it happened. But it's only a few of frames so it's no huge loss. One day when I get my hands on an editor and some presstapes, I will have to go through it and fix it as needed. The presstape from the white leader also came apart first which should have told me to stop trying to project it but that's life.

Being a full 400ft reel of home movie stuff, it's got to have more worn out presstapes in it someplace. I wound it back up on the reel and stored it back away until such time it can be fixed.

Posted by Christian Bjorgen (Member # 1780) on December 12, 2009, 10:25 AM:

Hi, Josiah!

You can easily splice and fix reels using scissors and normal scotch tape, I have fixed several reels this way as I'm missing a splicer.

Posted by Josiah Allen (Member # 1855) on December 12, 2009, 01:46 PM:

Yeah, I was thinking scotch tape might work. I loosely rigged it with scotch tape just so I could reel it back up for repair later. Now that I have a presstape splicer, it will be easy to do properly, either with scotch tape or actual presstapes.

Posted by Josiah Allen (Member # 1855) on December 12, 2009, 04:21 PM:

Yep, scotch tape worked great. I used a safety pin to poke the sprocket holes in the tape. Held together nicely. One day I'll go back and fix it properly.

Here is a clip from that film I repaired with the tape (but the repaired spot isn't in the clip). Mind you, I used an LED flashlight to project this into a transfer box at very close range, hence the blue tint to it and very low light. But... it's a start! [Smile]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTPqdfUY3t8

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on December 13, 2009, 09:22 PM:

I've also used scotch tape, but carefully trimmed it so it wouldn't cover the sprockets. I mean tape is tape, right? The only difference is splicing tape has the holes pre-punched and spaced properly depending on the guage. I haven't had to do many splices so the few that I have done luckily have held up really well.

Posted by Josiah Allen (Member # 1855) on December 13, 2009, 10:14 PM:

Not sure I'll bother buying Presstapes but of course I'll keep the splicer just in case I do. Cementing doesn't sound any harder and I suspect it will hold up better than presstaping for permanent repairs. You just have to be quick about it when cementing as far as making sure you line up two ends of the film before it begins to bond.

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on December 13, 2009, 10:41 PM:

My experiences with cement aren't good. For me, the splices would dry up and then come apart in the projector. I don't like cement at all.

Posted by Michael Dixon (Member # 1836) on December 14, 2009, 07:45 AM:

I have tape splices made over 30 years ago that are still as good as ever.

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 892) on December 14, 2009, 11:21 AM:

I use fresh cement from Urbanski film and have never had a problem unless I over-apply. Old cement splices from 40-60 years ago have held up fine (others' films) except in rare cases. Cement chemically bonds the acetate with acetate, so unless the cement is bad or the splice was not formed correctly, it should be permanent. At least in theory!

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on December 14, 2009, 02:04 PM:

I've had to use scotch tape quite often myself. It works in a pinch, ut i would certianly love actual splicing tapes!

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on December 14, 2009, 03:55 PM:

I'd always use cement splices if I could get away with it, but since they don't work except on acetate stocks I have to be able to do tape too.

I guess being able to splice with cement is the upside to that whole Vinegar Syndrome...thing.

Posted by Josiah Allen (Member # 1855) on December 24, 2009, 11:37 PM:

I recently bought my first commercial film from ebay:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v222/illiop/8mm_spookyhooky.jpg

It was put out by "Ken Films". It's not in in the greatest condition but it could be worse. It is missing the "previews" (unless they are at the end), the "beginning" of the film looks like it was broken off (which makes me think the previews are missing) and it has several burned/melted out frames at the very beginning during the title and credits as well as many creases in that section. But after that, it gets a lot better aside from some scratches.

I haven't attempted to project this yet since it obviously needs some repair work to it first. I just reeled it off part way by hand to another reel to inspect it then reeled it back. I didn't go very far in either since I was doing it all by hand and trying to be careful with it in it's current fragile state. I will have to carefully examine how I can repair it without doing too many splices and without cutting out too much of it. I have a nearly full reel of white lead-in tape so I will also add some of that to it during repair.

But considering the price I paid of $2.75 including shipping, I can't complain too much for starting my collection. [Cool]

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