Clean Film.... with WD-40 ?

[David Strelitz]

If there's one thing that gets debate here, it's WD40.
Bit like gherkins with Burgers, cream and jam with Scones (British thing) Evs, hideous 4wheel drive vehicles in city centres and too wide for car park spaces, cycle lanes and my current favourite, mobility scooters the size of tanks, supplied with optional snow plough and driven in pedestrians shopping precinct by morons with cigarette in mouth and phone in hand 🤬

There are various flavours of WD 40 including a dry PTFE which FWIW I am yet to try.
WD40 does have to be used with care, and excess taken off with a dry cotton glove or micro cloth.
Standby for flack 😜

[Steve Klare]

Hi David,

I've heard this one a number of times and it's always made me a little nervous because even though it's often used as a lubricant, the people that make it didn't intend it to be one, especially on motion picture film. I always worry about what the long term effects are, when it becomes too late.

Do you have a long history with it? I want to be fair here: I often use toothpaste for fine polishing even though the Colgate-Palmolive people never intended it for that either.

"WD" stands for "water displacement": something very commonly used in corrosion prevention. (The Navies of the world are big customers.) They got their big start back in the days of the early US ICBM program. When they filled up the missiles with liquid oxygen and hydrogen, the cryogenic temperatures froze the moisture in the air and if the rocket stood very long before launch, it could pick up a couple of thousand pounds of ice. Solution? Spray the outside of the rocket with gallons and gallons of WD-40: the ice would still form, but would fall off under its own weight

We had an elderly relative who used WD-40 basically as the solution to all of life's problems. We always swore when we tasted it in her cooking we were going to get her to a doctor as soon as possible!

[Osi Osgood]

I'll admit that it scares me to think of using a car lubricant on my precious prints, but then I use a little of "Film Guard" as possible.

[Rob Young]

My bottle of Filmguard was bought back in 2004. And it still has about a quarter left to go. It's just brilliant stuff; prints treated 20 years ago (where DID those years go??!!) still run amazingly well.

I've cleaned my whole collection with it and many 16mm features too.

Just the other night I ran one of my copies of The Empire Strikes Back (I admit I have more than one...anyway...). This copy always drifted in and out of focus during part 1, as though the film base had been warped at some point in its life. About 5 years ago I gave it a hefty Filmguard treatment. I did watch it a couple of times at the time and it was a lot better. Anyway, the other night it ran perfectly with no focus drift. Out of the box after 5 years and ran like a dream.

Filmguard is the film collectors dream product. Why anyone would consider risking anything else is just crazy. Just my opinion and I don't have shares in any of Brad's ventures...if only!

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

ONLY if Filmguard is readily & conveniently available in any region of the world...

[Rob Young]

Oh, that's a fair point, Nantawat.