Useless spool

[Dominique De Bast]

I've just received a super 8 film ordered in the US. When I opened the box (on which a wrong title is written), I first thought there had beens mistake since I saw a 16 mm like spool but it appears that although it has a square hub it's 8 mm width. So unless you use a long play unit, you cannot do much with such spools...

[Simon Balderston]

hi dominque what is the film i can play these reels

[Dominique De Bast]

The film is Birth Of A Nation. I will put it on classical super 8 spools, using a 8/16 rewinder.

[Graham Ritchie]

That's interesting Dominique I have never come across a Super 8 reel that has a square center, that's always been 16mm ...very strange. Has it been a 16mm reel that someone has modified for storage purpose?

[Osi Osgood]

I've run across a few of those. They can only be used on very super 8 projectors, but for the life of me, I can't remember which.

[Janice Glesser]

I am curious too. What projector or adapter is used for this type of reel?

[Steve Klare]

They say there is nothing new under the Sun!

http://8mmforum.film-tech.com/cgi-bi...c;f=1;t=007378

(Not even that old saying!)

It looks like this was built for a long play unit called "Extend-A-Reel".

[Janice Glesser]

Does anybody have a picture of what an Extend-A-Reel looks like? Unfortunately there was no pic in the old thread.

[Dominique De Bast]

Thanks, Steve. I had in mind the Eiki long play unit (sadly, I don't owne any), I didn't know about the other one.

Graham, they are strange, indeed ; there is a mechanism that goes into the hub on one of its two positions. I have no idea what it was added for...

[Dominique De Bast]

Simon, what kind of equipment do you use for those spools ? Could you post a picture ?

[Frank Commins]

Gosh, it's been a long time since I thought of the old "Extend-A-Reel" outfit. It was introduced way back in the day by a company called "Ra-Cine". It was essentially a self-powered pedestal unit which supported a feed reel, and take-up reel on the same device. It must have enjoyed some degree of success, because later Ra-Cine came out with a colored filter unit (it might have been called "Select-A-Fllter", but it was so long ago my memory might be playing tricks on me) which sat in front of the projector lens, and supposedly with a simple manual touch would change filters, and 'tint' a scene to increase the emotional impact of a black & white film. I suspect this later product didn't do as well as it was not too soon after that the company faded away...

If I can find some documentation about either the Extend-A-Reel or the Select-A-Filter I'll post them here.

Frank

[Chip Gelmini]

Janice

if someone has a picture of the Eiki long play device which sits behind the projector the extend a reel looks much like that but on a smaller scale. I am referring to the overall construction of the base unit.

Recalling an article in the 70's in super 8 filmmaker magazine it was also designed like some cheaper Eumigs whereas both big reels supply and take up sat next to each other on the same split shaft

I only saw the magazine article but in an odd way it got me thinking of building my long play system and I was only 16. The rest as they say is history!

I was never a fan of two different reels on the same shaft especially when both reels had very different rpm's and basically only for a short time perhaps a minute or two was the rpm the same. I had a demo at a camera shop of one of those Eumigs and I was not impressed.

having interested in 8mm since before age 8 Perhaps as early as age 5 by the time I was 10 I was studying the mechanics of projectors and learning about inside the gearbox long before most kids my age had done that.

for those of you who have these reels which I normally throw away after I remove the film from them if you don't have 16 mm rewinds but you can rewind Super8 with the crank are you really need is access to a 16 mm projector and you place that on the left side of the left side handcrank that will hold the 16 mm² real as you carefully fast-forward it onto the Super 8 Reels using the left or right crank just allow yourself enough room on the table to do it.

There was even a time when I tried to put one of these reels empty on the drill press and drill out the square hole to half inch round so that it would have worked on a typical super eight device but those metal square clips are glued at the factory and a drill press ripped it off the hub and the real was basically no good at all

since these reels with the 16 mm hub are made by plyo magic for extend a real company I wouldn't really keep them at all also you should be aware that Goldberg products out of Denver Colorado does have some 8 mm reels made out of steel that have 16 mm² hubs and I believe these are what they use at the labs and exchanges when they take films off cores and put them on Reels to work on them before finally putting an 8 mm on a proper reel that you can run This is been hard for me to remember because it was so long ago but I do hope that some of this information will help others experiencing getting films on the Square hub large reels I advise everyone to take the film off of them as soon as you can carefully and then throw the reels away because they're not really worth anything to the 8 mm collector

This is of course my own opinion you guys and girls can do what you want

This reply was done using my cell phone voice dictation please excuse any issues with grammar and figure it out where there are grammar issues. Which asks the burning question with all these updates to cell phone software why the heck can't they fix voice dictation

[Janice Glesser]

* Frank it would be great if you can dig up some docs and pics on the Extend-a-reel. Nothing came up on a Google images search. Images might be pretty rare .