Home restoring 8mm film with moderate to severe Vinegar Syndrome

[Kurt Triffet]

I have 9 five inch reels, all from 1939 to 1941 in various stages of decay. Home movies my grandfather took. I successfully digitized many other that had been stored separately, either in cardboard or away from these that were all in one hinged metal film box. These would be far too expensive to have professionally looked at, and some of the content may be quite uneventful family-wise. Was going to take the worst and try a few suggestions I got on Reddit.

• One was was to soak a reel in very cold distilled water for 30 mins to an hour. Evaluate pliability.
• Another was to soak in a film cleaner, but a brand name was not mentioned.

Any thoughts as a prudent way to approach and try to see if I can salvage some of the film?

I was using a Movie Maker Pro to digitize the others.

[David Kilderry]

What you show you looks too far gone for the correction methods mentioned. Despite people always chiming in with remedies for VS prints, there really are no solutions. There may be some expensive scanning options available but it really depends how shrunken the prints are. Looks like the VS spread through that box that was probably air-tight unfortunately.

[Osi Osgood]

It does appear that you'll lose some of the footage, too far gone, but most of those reels may be saved. Find a room you don't use, and carefully unspool the film, as the VS got that way by being sealed up. Un reeling it will at least sperate and allow air flow, unfortunately, I can't help with advice on solutions to soak the film in. I suggest finding an unused room, as that vinegar is going to smell to high heaven.

[Russ Green]

Make sure that you keep the affected film away from any other film stock you have or you risk contaminating that as well,there is no cure for VS soaking in film cleaner only masks the odour for a short while it wont remedy it no matter how long you soak it. I keep any i get in the garage on its own until i decide what i'm gonna do with it but in the end it gets binned.I don't reuse any reels or containers that have been in contact with the film either it all gets thrown away,if the film is imprtant to you then you may be able to digitise it.

[Kurt Triffet]

Thank you all. The reels are isolated out of their cans in an open cardboard box in the garage. One really badly decayed reel just broke in 2" pieces as it was unrolled. Some of the other do not look as bad. At this point, I'd just like to make the film softer so that I can try and unroll it. Digitizing will be a challenge due to the tight roller turns.

[Thomas Dafnides]

Curious..... do you know if this is black and white or color? You could unwind the film and look at the frames through a bright light source to determine.