Poor Man's 16mm Rewinds

[Steve Klare]

This thing happened to me…
-after about 40 years of Super-8, I branched into 16mm too! I’m having a great time, but none of my accessories transfered over. From the start, I had no rewinds, no splicer, no viewer. All I had was a projector and one spare reel. One day a few months in, a couple of trailers showed up on cores: it was amazing the gymnastics we went through to get them spliced and put on a reel!
Obviously, the Kodak Pageant was never meant for editing!

(I keep doing this to myself! 8 years ago I bought a Japanese car and all of a sudden none of my wrenches fit!)

I looked into a pair of rewinds, but they were a little much for my purposes. For something I rarely use, they are pretty pricey and I’d need to clamp them to a table. At least for now, that would be my dining room table and somehow I see this becoming controversial! I want something simple, cheap and maybe even disposable if I do go the rewind route down the road.

I decided to start out simple:
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-it was bold, direct…yet it was as if it needed something more!
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These are lazy-susans. You’ve probably seen much larger ones used in kitchen cabinets. These are only 6 inches across. (amazon.com)
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So now we have the beginnings of a flatbed editor. The reels are rotated by inserting the end of a paintbrush in a reel hub and spinning it around. It should be usable for putting cored film on reels, especially short ones. I think a pair of plexiglass disks with the upper one weighted could help that operation go more smoothly.

Let's call this a prototype or even proof of concept (for one thing, that board needs sanding!). It could be improved with a cranking mechanism or even motorized. At the very least, it could be refined quite a bit. (The board and nails feel just a little bit Fred Flintstone!)

I would NOT rewind a 16mm feature with this as it stands: life is too short!
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I’m not saying this does the same job as a pair of Neumade rewinds in any way, but for about 12 bucks worth of hardware, a scrap of wood and two nails, it proved quite usable! (You have to love 16mm: a magnifying glass was all the viewer I needed!)
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[Terry Sills]

Love it Steve - Necessity is the mother of invention 😎

[Steve Klare]

Thanks!

The joy of it is how much flipping the reels on their sides simplifies everything. There is no need to latch them in place: gravity takes care of that. If I decided to add some sort of drive, I wouldn't even need to match the spindle to the reel center: gravity and friction could do the work. (Note for residents of the International Space Station: this setup is not for you! )

I see the awful piece of wood going away and maybe becoming an aluminum plate. Underneath there could be a pulley, a belt, and a larger pulley. The shaft of the larger pulley could go back upstairs to a crank.

This is basically a light-duty "machine" for here and there. The first job I did with it was take my trailer reel and insert a third trailer between the two that were there to start. That's about as complicated as I ever get on 16mm. Typically I might just take a "new" print that has damage at the head and repair it as best I can and add leader, or put some black leader at the tail so I don't wake my audience up. On Super-8 I've gotten 4 or five cartridges back and spent days editing, I don't anticipate ever doing that on 16.

-then again, if the reel hub doesn't mate with the spindle (-or "nail" if you prefer...), this thing is not gauge specific.

[Joe Taffis]

It's tough being a "poor man" in the super 8 / 16mil hobby. That photo reminds me of the old "platter on a plank" fiasco

[Steve Klare]

-beg to differ, Joe!

You might not start out that way, but you might end UP poor!
(In all seriousness, as a guy with a house, a kid in college and three cars: film-collecting is isn't even on my financial radar!)

I've been thinking of that time myself, maybe that's part of the reason I imagine this thing un-coring ("de-coring?") films onto reels. I count that first time a cored film arrived in the mail as kind of an initiation into 16mm! (Especially given what I had to work with at the time...)

I hope to see the "plank" part of it go away: as I said, an aluminum plate would work, but then again Plexiglas would look kind of cool! (-and I can cut that on my bandsaw.)

The plank itself would be excellent in my fireplace on a cold night.

[Steve Klare]

So last night we were having an early one of many Christmas film shows, and I popped a splice on a Super-8 film. I heard the severed tail of the film flapping on the machine so I instantly bolted into action! (I think I got there even before the severed "head" reached the carpet.) I wrapped the severed film onto the take-up: downtime not much more than a minute.

I went to replace the splice today, but I had a problem: the film was on an 800 Foot take-up reel and my S8 editor/viewer is 600 Feet maximum.

What to do?
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The wider S8 spindle openings make this a little more rattly, so it's possible some sort of adapter might be a good idea.

-but could this idea lead to something generally useful?

(Apologies for the cross-gauge post: this could be a piece of equipment that is General Yak worthy!)

PS: This "editing table" is also being used for gift-wrap: it's busy this week!

[Lee Mannering]

Nice read Steve well done