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What's New 12
I decided What's New 11 had become too long so I made it into two pages AND am starting a new page. Pl remember that entries are latest first, older stuff further down the page.
26th July 2020
An Issue or two back, Projections magazine published a picture of an advert for a film cleaning machine, which so horrified me I wrote a piece about film cleaning for the magazine. This in turn prompted Jermy Jago to send me a copy of another film cleaner, even worse than the one discovered by projections.
This in turn prompted me to send him the above picture of a rather similar-looking piece of apparatus, the Cut-a-Rut, expressing my amazement as to why anyone would want to use such a primitive and dangerous-looking device, which I assumed would be to remove mag stripe. There is, it seems, rather more to the story than that, as Jeremy explains:
"I remember reading about the Carnell Cut-A-Rut at the time. I think the prime original purpose was actually to cut a groove (actually a rectangular trench) in a film, prior to laying laminated stripe. The claimed advantages were that (a) no thickness was added - the film spooled as well as before and to the same diameter, not overfilling an already full spool; (b) the matted floor of the groove gave a better cement bond to the stripe, just like pre-scraping a cement splice and (c) one could stripe the emulsion side, as required with certain copies and prints with non-standard emulsion position, by first planning off a stripe of the gelatine, exposing the base below. I remember reference to Carnells advising regular blade sharpening by oilstone.
As for removal of stripe ... this seems to have been one of those curses of amateur film making that no one talked openly about, but which one was supposed to suffer in silence! Laminated stripe applied by home striping machines, even after one had mastered the art, would sometimes go wrong - refusing to take a good recording even if the stripe seemed to have gone on smoothly. The only way out was to plane it all off and try again, which was where the Cut-a-Rut was (meant) to come in. Whether the groove exposed (after planing the solidified mess) was smooth enough to work better a second time is anyone's guess! All rather depressing. One can understand the enormous popularity of pre-striped Super 8 when it arrived somewhere around 1973. Stripe in general was something amateurs grimly endured, even when it sounded poor, because it was at least preferable to the agonising chaos of loss of tape sync."
I may have to start a section on weird accessories if any more turn up.
19th July 2020
Mark S Super 8
As part of a general inventorying of what I have, I came across a Mark S Super 8, still in its original cardboard box. As usual, it ran slow but I was able to improve this a bit. What I am snookered with is the amp, which delivers not a peep. Still, here are some pix of the amp from various angles.
Removing the amp is a relatively easy task. The first job is to unhook the three-pin and two-pin plugs alongside the sound heads. Then remove the on-off volume control Beware; there is a a metal ring round the shaft which provides friction to hold the control in place. It may come off with the knob, which simply pulls off, so don't lose it. There is however a catch. There is a short lever part-way down the shaft which needs to be in a certain position before the amp can be removed. More of this anon.
The next step in liberating the amp is to remove the two screws securing the back cover. Then there are three screw sand some juggling with that lever on the volume control shaft and voila! A free amp! See pix below for more detail. (Note that the valves top left and bottom centre normally have a metal sleeve and the bottom valve and the circuitry immediately above are covered by a metal plate.)
Pic 1 shows the two plugs that need to be unhooked. In pic 2, I have marked with a red line as a pointer the three remaining screws that need to be femoved to free the amp. Remember that volume control shaft lever - you'll need to peer down the bottom of the amp (viewed from the back as in pic 2, near the marked screw) to see it. The other pix are just different views for illustration.
There must be scores if not hundreds of these machines lying around with some fault or another. I have never found anyone able and willing to undertake repairs of theses amps however. It's like skilled toolmaker types - one would have expected there to be huge numbers of skilled mechanical and electrical engineers still around, but I dunno where they are.
14th July 2020
I have put in a new page about the Kalee NP3 16mm silent projector. Click on the blue Kalee. It also has some Victor pix as the NP3 was a Victor clone.
As time goes by and with this damned virus I am becoming increasingly aware that there are some projects I am never likely to complete and I wonder if anyone would care to take them on. I have two in mind at the moment; the Victor SOD machine and the an example of the last 9.5 machine Pathé made.
There are some pictures of the projector part of the SOD machine in the new Kalee page mentioned above. It is a major restoration project for someone. There are also some pix elsewhere on the site but I can't yet recall where (They're in Silent to Sound, page 3). I have only a single 16" disc of the type used on these machines (Crystal Champions). The machine is missing a tone arm and the projector is missing its arms and the whole thing has been much messed about with. I think restoration to working order is doable if you have the time and skills.
The Pathé machine is a late PM, with push-button controls. My travails with this thing are extensively documented here PathéPM; go to Page 2.
I bought an identical silent machine because the motor had gone on the sound one when I got it, but it is a complex job and I'm not sure where to go with it.
If anyone thinks they can take these projects on and convince me they can do the job, please get in touch so we can discuss terms. Go to
Contact me.
I also have several 17.5 Home Talkie machines available. The main problem with these is cosmetic condition, followed by amps, lack of speakers - I am not sure but the original may have been energised - and a need for lamp conversion.. Mechnically, there's not a lot to go wrong tho' a few bits have to be re-made sometimes. If interested, you know where to find me.
Given the exigencies of lockdown etc (I am in the official high risk category and woulod prefer to live a little longer) careful arrangements will be needed for collection as these things are far too hefty to send.
2nd July 2020
Hard to recall exactly what I have been doing since May. One of the main jobs has been to attempt an inventory of all my films and equipment. I have done this before, but not completely and anyway a lot has changed since then. It involves a lot of sxcrabbling around in confined soaces, bending down too much and lifting far too many heavy projectors. On that subject, can anyone help me over Bell and Howells? I seem to have ended up with a number of them, most of which are making a clattering noise even tho' there is no sign of the worm being cracked. And they often work better in reverse than forward. Us there any other known problem with these machines that could cause the clattering or is it always the worm? It's such a chore changing them and I've only done it before with ordinary machines, whereas at present I am made up with slot-loaders which look to be a whole other ball-game. Is there an expert on these mavchines left anywhere who could give me advice or copies of instructions (eg on how to change a worm!) or even, in extremis, fix up an otherwise good machine for me? I spose they're a bit of a drag (or is it drug?) on the market nowadays, tho' to look at the silly prices on eBay there's a booming market for cine stuff, which you and I know there is not. Anyway, I have inventoried my 9.5 films and there are relatively few 16 and 8 to worry about. I am less looking forward to the 17.5, of which I have about 500 reels (measured as 500' being a reel), and most of them are in the garage loft so it's up and down ladders. The trouble with the projectors in the garage is that most of them are, unlike the ones in the loft/cinema, in need of attention to a greater or lesser extent. I have what could be several Voxes and Super Voxes if they were cannibalised together, but it's a lot of work. H's likewise and 200B's also, tho' to a lesser extent. Not enough hours in the day, energy or will to do all the stuff I could do. What I need is a clone, who would do things exactly the same way as I would. But could I trust him?
Another thing taking up time is working on one of the original Pathé peforators, capable of punching three rows of 9.5 perfs plus 2 rows of pilot holes in 35mm. Or at least it could if only it had not been cannibalised/mucked about with and is so missing vital parts like the claw array that moves the film thru after punching and, indeed, if there was such a thing as UNperforated ACETATE 35mm available, which so far as I know there is not . Anyway, it's really only for historical value as I cannot imagine any commercial use. Incidentally, I had long assumed that all the perfs were made at once - this is what Novascope did. However, I suspect now that Pathé either made the pilot perfs first or even bought in or made themselves film with just the pilot perfs, making processing less tricky, and adding the perfs only at the last minute prior to slitting. This may help to explain the positioning of the perfs out of register with the frame line that one sometimes sees.
What else. I have spent a lot of time devising a way of fitting a fan, douser and HID lamp to a Specto, à la Saffrey conversion.
I started with the wrong machine however, a 30v 100w one, which has a slightly smaller lamphouse than later models and as such would not accept the mirror lamp, and I had to make do with the peanut equivalent. Hopefully, details will be in the next Flickers. Incidentally. Specto's are far more prolific even than H's - I have an absolute infestation of them, nearly all requiring work to make anything of them. I have also been looking at an Astor Cinevisor (see http://www.cinerdistan.com/9-5/2-uncategorised/437-toys-2) but as with so many machines, it has problems that will require me to design and make a new part to get it to work.
Most recently I have turned my attention to a Kalee NP3 16mm machine, which appears to be little more than a badged Victor. I have an Instruction book and lots of pix, so it will probably get its own page in the 16mm silent section before long. Its main problem at present is that it has one of those circular motor speed theostats, and a particularly flimsy example of its type it is, too.
I am going to have to figure out how to fit something like a Specto equivalent, since I have already identified 3 clear breaks in the wire and I see no way of fixing it. There are probably more, too, hidden beneath corrosion; no wonder the motor wouldn't run.
5th May 2020
I have come across some really interesting books about the more technical side of film, which I thought were well worth including in my list of literature - see Books
April 27th 2020
I have made some amendments/additions to the two entries below and inserted the promised pix.
April 23 2020
Part 2 - continued from below
Nothing is, of course, ever as simple as it appears. As I mentioned at the end of the last entry, I did indeed find the long-play unit and then my troubles began. To start with, it had spool spindles designed only for 16mm, which is about the last gauge for which I might use it. Std 8, yes, Super 8, yes, 9.5, yes, 17.5, yes. But not 16mm - I basically gave up on 16mm film some years ago and I don't think I have any left long enuff to need an LP Unit. My first thought was to make some adapters to fit over the 16mm spool noses and, after some fiddling, I achieved this and could use both Std and Super 8 spools, using adapters based on the Muray type, but truncated to cater for the fact that the original noses worked by holding reels on with a big knob engaging with a thread on the spindle (note this for later reference), so the adapters didn't need the extra length neede for the slot into which the fold-over spool retainers on the Muray fitted.
The next thing I did was to get out a spooled-up 8mm film , which turned out to be on a slimmed-down 1600' reel. Only it was a home-made conversion of a real 16mm reel, with a 16mm core. This would not of course fit my new adapters; more important, it would not fit the 16mm spindles because, apart from the usual square bit of a 16mm nose, the rest of the spindle dwindled to 6mm for the threaded portion and the reel just drooped to the side. As originally received, there were extra bits of square section tube to fit over the 6mm bit and prop the reel up, but these were too long for the cut-down spool (because the big knob would only work properly if up against the reel itself) and I had to make a new shorter one - I just used round section and I only needed one as I could use any spool at the other end.
Then I thought, why don't I go the whole hog and convert to Muray adapters and so have a multi-gauge LPU? I was well into this new project before it was borne in on me that I would have to either cut down some adapters or make new, shorter ones - I have often made spare Muray adapters for my own use or sale, so this is just a bore but not a problem as such. And the length would need to be carefully adjusted to ensure the big knob would butt closely enuff against the reel to hold it firmly. Which it won't as reels are all different (and 9.5 ones have that protruding little bit just around the spindle-hole), so I shall probably have to make a batch of custom washers to use for various gauges. Later examination made me hope this would apply only to 8mm and 16mm and that maybe I might even be able to re-purpose my existing 8mm adapters which I had made early on in this process. This proved mostly right; I had to slightly adjust the 8mm Super 8 bits, and cut off the slots for the 16mm adapters nearly completely, but my existing 9.5 and 17.5 adapters seem to fit OK, tho I need a washer for the 9.5. I ent decided yet what to do about the guide rollers on the spool arms. It meant of course that I had to make entirely new spool spindles, copying the originals at the inner end and copying the Muray type, adapted for screw thread reel retainers.
The other problem I have found is that the wooden baseboard of the LPU has various intrusions which mean the available surface is not on one level. At each end there is provision for the horizontal, L-shaped bases supporting the upright arms (that carry the spool spindles high up), to slide in and out (using Big Knobs again), presumably for adjustment/storage. One has about twice the travel of the other. There are also strips of wood either side of the wooden base on which the horizontal bits rest, raising the level at the sides. Not sure why as the big knobs still get in the way as they are hogher than the wood strips. What it does mean, however, is that the platform is not notably suited for 8mm machines, especially ones with a single front foot. So I shall probably have to make a supplementary platform to cover the whole area (aside from the horizontal adjusters) and provide a nice flat platform suitable for most projectors. And did I mention that there are two 16mm guide rollers on each of the uprights? Not sure if I can leave these as 16mm or have to custom-make some.
And yes, I can see that much of this is not going to make much sense without pix so I shall see what I can do. I told you nothing was ever simple.
First we have the baseboard as received. Second is the complete unit with 6000' 16mm spools in place. £ is the simple control panel/mains input. 4 and 5 are the two sides of my supplementary baseboard. 6 shows how one of those big Fumeo 8mm spools fits - they are about the biggest I know.
As to pic 1, I do not know why the two ends have different lengths of adjustment. Nor do I know why, having initially made holes for the bolts for clamping the arms that are equidistant from their respective ends, one was subsequently moved closer to the end. These fittings arrived with only a small washer between the big knob and the L bracket; I decided a big knob whould have a big washer. Ditto with the fittings where the L brackets meet the uprightsIn pic 2, you can see that the arms connect to the baseboard by shorter (than the uprights) L-shaped brackets. You can just see behind the uprights the edges of the big knobs and, at the front, the heads of the bolts to which they connect, that clamp the upper arms to the lower bracket. Note that under the end of the L brackets, directly under the uprights, are blocks that support the brackets so the outer end is at the same height as the baseboard. I do not know why the two spools are at different heights, tho' I spose it's based on a 16mm projector and the route the film takes. Note there are two guide rollers for the right-hand arm as well as the left, but one is hidden behind the spool. There are holes for these rollers at various heights. Pic 3 shows the controls, with the DC power connection at the bottom. I think there should have been an arangement for the motor to plug in at the top and for the socket to connect to the power input, but the motor is actually hard-wired and dangled about a lot on its wire when I had to remove to to fit a new spindle.The motor seems to me to be tiny for the job it has to do but Mr Pearce assures me it works. The top switch is labelled tension; it seems to me this label belongs with the adjusting knob above it, because the switch is really just on-off; it needs to be on for the normal take-up to work as it does for the rewind when this is switched on. Pix 4 & 5 are the two sides of my supplementary baseboard, which I made to form a more user-friendly base for 8mm machines; this is before the final coat of polyurethane varnish was applied.
April 18 2020
Enuff with all this boring health stuff and back to cine matters. The following is just an account of me playing about with projectors for convalescent amusement. Below is Part 1 of a continuing story. Part 2 will follow above.
Over the years, for a variety of reasons and usually as incidental to other deals, I have accumulated a fair amount of Standard 8, for which I have a sneaking fondness. Much of it is on super-size reels, designed to be shown on a Heurtier Superson with extended spool arms. Now, I am a little wary of the Heurtier when it comes to mag sound. The heavy sound smoothing of the Universal is still in play, to which mag adds the drag of passing thru sound heads which, in the case of the Heurtier, seem to be rather firmly sprung. I cannot but feel that the total tension on the film is worryingly high. This may seem and quite possibly is a bit fussy, but it has led me to explore once more the good old original 8mm machines, of which I have basically two in reasonable working order.
The first is a Eumig Mark S 709 dual gauge machine. I have to say this is pretty impressive for an aged Eumig - none of that slow running in either forward or reverse and a surprisingly bright pic, admittedly at 8mm distance from the screen so a smaller pic. The first film I tried to run was a 5 x 400' version of Second Chorus, a decidedly so-so musical starring Fred Astaire, Paulette Goddard and George Murphy, together with Artie Shaw and his Orchestra. This immediately led me into issues of sound quality, most of which I think were down to the print rather than the machine. I cleaned each reel before showing, which seemed to help (after first trying one reel uncleaned). I then turned my attention to other measures, first trying one of the old Craven in-line speaker controls, a simple one for tone only (You will have gathered I was using an external speaker). This seemed to help some, but the sound was a bit harsh and distorted, although dialogue was very clear. Next was to add an external amp, which ended up giving decent sound, if not of the highest quality.
At this point, the Standard 8 strand collided with another strand I was playing about with, ie using a Bluetooth speaker rather than a wired speaker to produce film sound. I was looking at this because, as many of you will know, I often set a projector up with simply a photocell/diode and a connector for an external amp or, I thought, perhaps an amp at a wireless distance. One can imagine this being useful for shows, avoiding the need for trailing speaker wires. Not so much use in the home, but I just thought it would be fun to play with and maybe learn a few new things.
The first thing I learned was that I needed a Bluetooth transmitter and possibly a pre-amp to ensure adequate sound level from a diode. The final requirement was a Bluetooth speaker. These are of two types, those with a built-in mains-charged lithium battery, designed for portable use (and very frequently emphasising their waterproofness) and those operated direct from the mains and so essentially domestic machines. These are available in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but it seemed to me if I wanted to have decent sound I would need a mid-price/budget one rather than a very basic toy. This made me gulp a bit, as I didn't know if all ths would work. Fortunately, a daughter imported for viral reasons has a rather-better-than-basic speaker, so I was able to test the principle without going OTT on expenditure.
Well, the principle worked, but in practice there were problems The sound was coarse and distorted at anything above modest volume and I had huge problems with connecting things together. Some of the first problem might well have been due to the connector problem, but there might also be an issue of matching the various bits of kit. I had bought a fairly small (tiny even) transmitter, which may not be person enuff for the job. Incidentally, there was also a technical issue affecting matching sound and picture, or sync as we would say. Apparently, Bluetooth transmiters (and maybe the amps, tho I am not clear on this) could vary and fall out of sync with the picture. This is a known problem and several systems for minimising this exist. The one I picked up on was aptX, which both transmitter and speaker must be designed to handle. It increases cost of course. Where it's only a question of reproducing sound, the sync does not matter of course.
Anyway, back to connectors. I ran my initial tests using a (very ancient) portable CD player. The problem was that both CD player and pre-amp were designed for stereo, with different connectors - 3.5mm jack for CD and 2 x RCA for the pre-amp. As I was only looking to deal with mono sound, I had wired the two signal inputs to the pre-amp together. I did not have a stereo 3.5 jack to RCA phono lead, so was forced to fall back on those mini converter plugs that can do the same job. This where my trouble started. Here was I trying to connect a 3.5 stereo jack to 3.5mm stereo jack lead from the CD, to the pre-amp, using a RCA to stereo jack connection converter, to a mono input on the pre-amp. These connections did not work well and only by moving the connector/connection about was I able to get sound thru at all.
I had already encountered similar problems trying to run the Eumig 709 thru an external amp. The official way to do this was by using a properly-wired 5-pin DIN plug from a socket on the projector, but so far nothing I have tried can raise a peep out of this route. I did get somewhere by using a 3.5mm stereo jack in the earphone socket. If I wiggled the plug about (probably more than one plug as I needed to stack connectors to get the right connections) sufficiently there was a sweet spot that worked, as long as you didn't knock anything. I tried a mono 3.5 jack, reasoning that the projector must be mono, but couldn't get it to stay in the hole properly or make any kind of connection. In the end, my brain started to hurt so I called a halt for the time being.
Later, I turned to my second machine, a genuine classic, a Mark S Standard 8-only machine. I have found that this and related models often suffer from deterioration of the lubricant and the performance of the spindle-to-rubber-wheel motor drive, so that they run slowly or the mech doesn't move at all, particularly in reverse. This particular machine is one I have attempted to re-lubricate in the past and altho' initally slow, it soon regained normal speed after being run for a while with the lamp on. Reverse took longer, but eventually regained most if not all of its speed. I was able to run a test reel thru using the internal speaker only and got excellent results. The 709 had no slowness and a rewind like lightning. The final point about these projectors is that the way forward for me, rather than re-spooling lots of spooled-up films onto reels that I do not got, may be to use a long-play device. I acquired a 16mm one of these from Bryan Pearce some years ago, which he had made from a re-fettled and improved Craven - actually, I think I mean Cresta Electronics? no, I don't, I mean Spondon - machine. I have yet to try it; this might be the time. After all, conversion to 8mm can't be that hard?
One thing about all this lockdown business is that it has legitimised what I already do and have done for many years - spend a good deal of my time simply pootling about with projectors and films just for fun. Viva Lockdown is my probably minority view.