The 200B Plus below was brought along by Mikael Barnard. It also has other interesting features that I have

been examining. It has a sound attachment, not a type I have seen before and, to go with it, has been

fitted with what I think is a very neat little governor attachment, intended no doubt to stabilise the sound

speed.

The sound head seems to have been modified to use a solar cell  rather than the original PEC, and is clearly

in need of a little TLC. The design of the lamp housing seems to enable use for both 9.5 and 16. Pic 2 shows it

just located in its mounting holes,; Pic 5 shows it pushed in to operating position. The screw next to the sound

telescope may be to adjust for sound track position? I think the governor is a splendid concept and very compact.

It uses a Meccano(TM) socket coupling as a pulley. The last pic shows it with the lid off. Looks like a prototype,

with evidence of bits that didn't quite work out.

Been doing the odd bit of fiddling, being rather restricted by the severe cold.

The first two pix are looking down the barrel of a 200B Plus and show the different masking for 9.5 and

16, effected by a lever above the gate. Pic three shows (left) an original of the lever that has broken - that

breach in the hole in the shorter arm should not be there. Right is a replacement I have made. Pic 4 shows the

lever from the "outside", so to speak. There are one or two points of note. The space for the pivot is very

tight, reflected in the way the pivot hole is so close to the edge. Fortunately, I drilled the hole first then filed

to shape after. The other thing is that you cannot actually remove the pivot screw without first removing the

gate mounting screw. From the look of it, there is framing adjustment only for the top of the 16mm pic. One

does wonder exactly what brutal mistreatment could possibly have resulted in this damage in the first place!

I have been going over my battle-scarred old Super Vox, which I had thought had lost its sound. Fortunately not,

but I did find that the top loop was disappearing. This seemed to be due to slackness in the spring that holds

the guide roller up to the sprocket. I have had problems with this spring before; it is a flat strip bent to provide

both a support to the guide roller and a positive "click" between the open and closed positions. This one seems

to have lost its "temper" and is not sufficiently springy either to quite do its job or to be bent to do it. In the

end I simply took a small, thin piece of aluminium and push-fitted it flat on the surface of the machine, under

the spring (but without loosening the spring in any way) and wedged against a "step" in the structure. This

seems to allow the spring to do its job, tho' the "click" has gone.

Found I had these pix of a Bingoscope variant. I don't know where I got them; I suspect Trevor Adams,

as it's like one in the article he sent me.

What strikes me is that it looks very like the Coronet, only more elegant because of the nicely

rounded look.

I have sacrificed a very battered and faded B&H 606 which was just taking up space. As usual, I dismantled

it for any possibly useful parts. I thought I would show you this pic of the drive to the arms. I hade to

remove 9 screws to get the cover off, and then found this insanely complicated gear train. The large

gear on the left end, and the somewhat smaller corresponding gear on the right hand end are moved in

and out of engagement with the small gears at the ends of the arms by the rewind lever. There are

even hidden gears below some of the visible ones. I can't help thinking this is totally over the top and

quite needlessly complicated. Not that the rest of the mech is straightforward, either. It must have

made servicing and repair a nightmare and well beyond the capability of the average cine enthusiast.

Here is a pic of a serious Debrie I don't think I've shown before.

On the subject of Debries, has anyone got a circuit diagram for the Debrie mag unit, please?

I saw on ebay an offer of a DVD with scanned copies of 28mm projector handbooks. At £9.99, I was unable to

resist and got back an astonishing disc with what I think is a pretty pukka catalogue of this guy's collection. I

say think as I don't do Italian and he don't do much English, so communication is very basic. But this disc has

a huge range of images, of posters, of catalogues, of equipment, a lot about still cameras as well. I think

he may be willing to sell scanned copies of much of it. It is, of course, principally in Italian or French, tho'

there are a number of English-language adverts/manuals. But even for just the pix you see on this disc it is

well worth it. All I have is an email address, unfortunately. Here is a pic of the disc cover, you could just

email him a copy and ask for this. He does Paypal.

I need a Specto 8/16 in decent condition. Can anyone help?

After much soul-searching, we have reluctantly decided we cannot move to Sheffield - we seem to be far

less well placed to do it than even just 6-8 months ago. Will take time to adjust to this new reality.

I've now stripped all the components from the KOK I'm working on, and have also removed all the loose and

flaking paint. The pix are repetitive, but for a reason.

The repeats of the same pic are just to test , first, different camera settings and, second, different backgrounds

and ways of tweaking the pix. The last pic is an unprocessed example, just to give you an idea. I'm trying to

decide which shade of blue shows up the detail best and to eliminate oddities such as the way the colour of

the background is reflected in parts of the image, which I find unhelpful. You can see the pink tinge in the centre

rear of the first pic on row 2. What I tried in the end was to cut the blue, then convert the image to greyscale

and back and then re-paste the blue. You can see the result in the first two pix. I appreciate this will not be of

much interest to most of you, but it's all part of trying to optimise the quality of the pix in Cinerdistan.

Anyway, to return to our muttons. Can I first draw your attention to the first 3 generally identical pix. You can

see the vertical upright part of the frame at the front displays evidence of where two parts of a mould must have

met, with some excess material emerging (although it has mostly been fettled clean). This line extends all the

way round the perimeter of the frame and round some at least of the internal "cut-outs" in the frame. The

significance of this is much the same as the fact that, where the paint has flaked off, there is a slight "step" in

the surface. The problem is that, in my experience, any unevenness in the surface becomes glaringly obvious

when spray paint is applied. I do not have the capability to re-create the thick paint layers that seem to have

prevailed on old projectors, so I have to get the surface as smooth as possible  to avoid defects showing up.

Maybe I am being a bit perfectionist, but it does seem to me that a restoration is expected to have a higher

standard of finish than even the mintest of originals. This means a lot of work sanding, using a mask and goggles

as there is probably lead in the paint.

I'm not sure how quickly this will proceed, but I will try to keep a detailed pictorial record, spurred on by the

example of George Speller (see below)

Back end of 2011, I had email correspondence with George Speller, who has been working on a Pathescope "H".

It is of a type that I have not previously encountered, with a large resistance mat in the base rather than a tranny -

presumably for universal application on DC as well as AC? Anyway, George has done a lot of work stripping it down

and building it back up, and has now sent a link to a series of photos (that's the way to do it!) of the process. You

Some more pix of the lamphouse and lens I've made for the KOK - as much as anything, these are for my reference

when I've forgotten exactly what I did - probably the end of next week.

When and as I have had the chance, I have been beavering away in the workshop on more aspects of KOK restoration.

Here are some pix.

One of the biggest problems with any KOK restoration is those damned transfers/sign writing/lining etc on the mech, the base

and the cover. Usually, they are faded and damaged and, if not, how do you paint round them? You could spend a fortune on a

professional job, but how many of us can afford to do this? So every now and the I tinker with photo editing software, where

the only cost is my time.  The first of the pix is a bit of a clean-up of the cockerel on the front of the mech.

The other three are a new lens mount. I always seem to have the problem with Pathé machines that it is next to impossible to

to find an alternative lens that will work (I had this with the 17.5 Rural). While fiddling about trying to find something - anything -

that would actually give a focussed pic, I found an old-style B&H 75mm lens unscrewing in my hand into a front and a rear section.

The lens in the rear section seemed to work, so I set about making both a carrier for this lens (which I had to hack bits off) and a

mount to sit on the front of the projector. I have yet to test this out thoroughly, but it appears to be quite a short-throw lens.

It being Xmas and all and impossible to get hold of anything new, I worked with what I had, principally a length of thick-walled

aluminium tube of about the right size. It was fine for the lens carrier, but really just a bit too small in diameter for the mounting.

This created problems in that the screws thru the front plate of the mech that fit into the perimeter of the mounting have very

little material to go into. The spring-loading on the ball bearing that tracks in the spiral on the outside of the lens carrier, to

allow focussing, also doesn't really have enough depth of material to work with. I suppose I shall have to do a detailed drawing,

or I shall have no idea what to do if ever I need to make another - all this working out what to do and making a prototype is

very slow and time-consuming.

I haven't bothered much with cine cameras, but I just happened to pick up from a friend's bookshelf The Collector's Guide

to Cine Cameras by John Wade. First published in 2001, it covers pretty much the whole field as we ever knew it in the UK;

not many new cameras introduced after that time. I actually found it quite interesting, so much so that I immediately

bought a copy for myself. It taught me things I didn't previously know, like the fact that there were "Single 8" Standard 8

cameras as well as the later Super 8-based Fuji system and that the famous Minox camera, used by spies in films, used 9.5mm

film. I did find some holes eg no reference to the Mk 2 Campro with proper aperture control, but I would think it is impossible

for one person to cover such a broad field and to expect perfection.

After all, Mr Wade published before there was a Cinerdistan to help him! (Not that he'd find much on cameras).

Here is another link for you, mainly for lovers of early 35mm stuff. http://bioscope.biz/ . Thanks to Chris Bird for the tip.

I think I have pretty much finished the fabrication stage of the Premier 28mm project. I have had to make a few changes

in the light of experience and testing. The bracket holding the additional guide roller had to have some metal removed

to allow the big retaining nut for the bottom spool arm to be loosened sufficiently to move the arm to the "folded" position.

Even now, complete removal of the arm will require the fixing bolt, which passes thru a threaded hole in the main body,

to be undone at least partially. I have also modified the roller itself, by making up two much bigger side cheeks to prevent

the film coming off the roller. The original body of the roller remains, but with its ends cut off, so we now have a three-part

roller.

The other big change was the lamphouse. I mentioned that the front part of the lamphouse was a rather flimsy not-even-

complete circle of metal. I have replaced this with something much more robust, and also adjusted the rear part to bring

the mirror closer to the lamp.

I have inserted, as I mentioned, a 12v 100w lamp for the time being, because of the problem of lack of ventilation of the

lamphouse. I suppose it could be possible to do more on this front, but I have to stop somewhere and move on to my

many other projects, not to mention moving. The big 5-core cable from the machine, via the switch, now terminates in

a kind of "Y" lead, with a three-pin connector for the motor plus earth, and a 2-pin for the lamp. The cable is more than

capable of handling a much more powerful lamp if required. This leaves the question of a power supply. I have described

elsewhere how I mounted a Eumig P8 tranny in an old 50v 200w tranny box which once powered a 200B with that rating

of lamp. This gives 12v and 110v, although I have never been wholly happy with the 240v mains, 110v and 12v neutral wires

all meeting at the same terminal.  This is partly why I have made completely separate circuits for lamp and motor.

However, I didn't fit an electrical speed control and this machine definitely needs one, unless one is content to use the

original friction brake. It might also be useful to have an interlock arrangement for the lamp and motor. The original does

not seem to have had one and has a printed warning on the lamphouse to avoid subjecting the film to the full power of

the lamp. This seems to have been a common enough arrangement (also seen on the Victor 28), with the lamphouse

made to swing back without taking the back leaf of the gate with it. I would envisage, basically, leaving the original

switches in the "ON" position and controlling everything from the power supply, with maybe a lighting dimmer as a

motor speed control.

Another thing I had to do was swap the spring drive belt the machine arrived with for a rubber one. The motor on this

machine is mounted on a bracket which leaves it fee to pivot, at least within the confines of the aperture it occupies.

The weight of the motor acts by gravity to provide the necessary tension to the drive belt and, I would guess, a degree

of flexibility to absorb the sudden pull as the motor starts. However, the spring belt wasn't doing a very good job,

because it had too much spring or stretch in it. Every time the motor was started or stopped, the motor would thump

against its aperture. The rubber belt is fine.

The final thing left to do, of course, is the painting. This is really a summer job and is going to have to be deferred.

Rene Villareal has sent me some pix of film that appears to be something of an odd size.

Width is 14.5mm, sprocket holes seem to be the same as 16mm but seem to be a slightly different pitch.

The sound track looks about half the width it would be on 16. Perhaps someone has trimmed one side as

part of re-slitting and re-perforating to 9.5, but has yet to cut odd the sprockets and do the perfs. Tho'

why anyone would do such a thing.........   Any input about this oddity would be welcome.

                                                                ------------------------------------------------------------------

Trevor Adams has sent me pix of a thing I've never even heard of before. Beaut!

I promised a further pic of the Premier lamphouse; yur 'tiz. Other relevant pix are under 4th October.

What you see here is the original lamphouse back cover on the left. When it came to me, the mirror was

secured in place by 3 screws. To these I added small strips of metal to bring the outside diameter up to match

the inside diameter of the ex-Habitat lampshade I told you about. The screws make it too wide, so filed slots

in the rim of the Habitat lampshade allow it to be inserted. It's a slightly loose fit, enabling the lampshade to

be rotated a bit so the back cover can't fall out. When fitted, any looseness of fit vanishes, with the lampshade

going on the outside of the front part of the lamphouse and the "legs" of the back cover inside.

It's not a particularly satisfactory set-up for two main reasons. First, the only ventilation is in the gap between

the lampshade and the back cover. Second, the front part of the lamphouse is basically just a 1" or so wide strip

of thin metal that is not even a complete circle, because it isn't wide enough to gat past the lamp housing. It needs a

good test run with the 12v 100w lamp I propose to fit.

Now the wiring. Among the pix below under October 4th is the flash-looking switch. Here are the outer casing

and the actual switch from inside on which I have been working.

The original function was simple; both motor and lamp were fed with 110v which, in the case of the lamp, passed

thru the external resistance on the way. Only three circuit connections were needed - live to motor, live to lamp

and common neutral. There does not appear to have been any interlock - burning the film was avoided simply by

swinging the lamphouse back out of the way. No earth, of course.

The circuits passed across the body of the switch in thick brass strips. Pic 2 shows the common from one side (let's

call it the rear), which I have removed for reasons that I will explain. I decided to go for completely separate lamp

and motor circuits and to add an earth, requiring 5 links altogether. Pic 3 shows the front of the switch. Originally,

there was a single brass strip, marked "LINE", running across the bottom of the pic, providing a common connection

to the two switches. What I have done, slightly against my normal approach tho' it could be reversed fairly easily,

is to cut thru the line input and add a strip of black insulation. A second wire then leapfrogs to provide a separate

input to the second switch. Note that the output from the second switch is marked "LOW"; the output from the

first is labelled "MEDIUM", (tho' it's hidden under the insulation). Don't know why. The green insulation strip I added

to make sure my second input could not short-circuit.

Note that the green insulation and the new feed to the second switch are held in place by screws. At the end of

the short line indicating the output from the first switch you can see the type of fixing used in the construction

of the switch. It's a sort of hollow rivet, peened over at each end (you can see what I mean by peened in the pic).

Happily, it is possible to just screw into the holes a small screw of the right size that will cut its own thread and

provide an adequate fixing as long as you don't want to keep undoing it.

Now to the back of the switch (pic 4) where the common return shown in Pic 2 used to be. This common line was

held in place by a screw passing thru the body of the switch into a threaded hole in the little lug visible at one end.

What I have done is to take a strip of Paxolin board and fix brass strips to it to provide the three circuits I need, held

tenuously in position by the same screw thru the body of the switch into one of the brass strips. Most of the

holding in place is, of course, done by the outer casing of the switch. You can see I have wired one end  of the switch,

adding a further bit of insulation to be on the safe side. I just hope it all fits back inside the casing!

You will observe that this set-up provides neither lamp/motor interlock nor motor speed control. There is a brake-type

speed control on the projector, but I'm not keen on these. What I propose is to provide both these facilities on the

power supply - the switch is there more to look pretty and original.

You may recall I mentioned I had to fit an extra roller to avoid the take-up belt fouling the mech cover at the back

of the machine - 4th October again. However, I then found that the wiring at the base of the lamphouse was so

bulky that not only would the film foul it with my new spool arms but, I suspect, wouldn't have worked even with

the original arms. The wires from the lampholder were just about 2" long before a join was made by twisting the

ends of the wires together with the ends of the wires extending the circuit to the switch and then screwing a

plastic thingy with an internal metal thread over each of the the joints. A crude and bulky approach.

This challenged my ingenuity, of course. I found that the machine had fixed rear feet but that these had been

altered (not terribly well!) to raise the rear of the machine by about 0.5". I could understand this, as I have found

with my machine that when using a 1200' reel, it touches the surface on which the projector stands and stops the

take-up. I just made a shallow wooden base for mine. Anyway, this gave me the idea of using the rear feet to

attach a bracket with an additional roller to overcome the problem. Here is the result.

I have also added a steel base-plate; the original cover is just a sheet of stiff insulating card and over time has

become very buckled and battered - the steel plate tidies it up and stops the wires bending it where they emerge

from the holes in the side of the base. The are open-sided, leaving the card base to do a job it just isn't strong

enough to do (tho' I have left it in place for insulation). Regular followers will be unsurprised to learn that I have

since re-done the wiring so that my extra roller probably isn't needed..........

Just a shot now of the projector base wiring in progress.

As you can see, the base is very shallow and I was lucky to have to hand a shallow terminal strip. The wires you

see joining the RH side of this strip are from the lampholder. The only authentic-looking wire I have to hand

(it's almost impossible to get) is a bit thin so I have doubled up for the lamp. This wire isn't too bad, but I have

another even thinner type which is horrendous - the moment you cut it, the woven outer cover starts to unravel

and rapidly becomes almost unmanageable. It's a struggle to get a bit of heat-shrink tube across the unravelling

end to sound material to stop the rot spreading.

Although I have had an interest in Meccano(TM) for many years, I've never come across this. Mikael Barnard

found it on the net somewhere. The blurb claimed it dated from the 30's and was 90% Meccano parts, the

remainder presumably being vital bits to enable it actually to function as a projector (9.5, I think).

Been spending much time on the 28mm Premier. It's no wonder you can hardly ever find anyone willing to do

repair or alteration work. I know I am rather slow, tho' some of this is because I'm always proto-typing and

spending time thinking and designing. Nonetheless, I would hate to try to make a living doing this sort of work

 - I enjoy it greatly but I don't think I could earn enough to keep body and soul together. Much better to have it

as a hobby, where time is unimportant and repairs are only for friends and not for evil customers.

Here are some pix of my efforts to make a new lampholder, as usual without changing the original. The original

is on the left - a fairly standard small 2-pin bayonet. What here looks simple took a lot of doing in practice. I

made an aluminium thingy, with a narrow tail that is a push fit into the lampholder. The other end I opened up

big enough to take a standard halogen lamp base, which is held in place by grub screws either side. The lamp

base had its wires cut off to only about 0.25" long. Two brass rods, with a hole drilled in the top to accept the

lamp base wires, were soldered to these tiny bits of wire. These brass rods pass thru holes in a "plug" of PTFE.

The holes at the bottom end of the plug (which incidentally is held in position by another grub screw) fit over

the bayonet pins of the original base. Everything has to be just the right length so that when the new lampholder

is inserted into the old, the brass rods make contact with the bayonet pins.

I had terrible trouble ensuring all the connections were right and circuits complete. I kept getting on/off readings

from my multimeter and couldn't get consistent results. First I found that one of the the crocodile-clip jump

leads I was using to make connections was dicky. Then a plug with just a couple of inches of wire left in, cut

off some elderly machine or other, proved faulty and had to be re-wired. Finally I found that the battery in

my meter was low and just didn't have the oomph to push a signal thru. All this seems a bit unfair - I think

THINGS may be against me - they certainly know how to make life difficult.

Now for a huge SMUG. I keep reciting my mantra - never throw anything away - to 'er indoors, who is a cynic

in these things. One thing I saved was the lampholder from an ancient - 40 year-old - floor lamp from Habitat.

Just a standard "spotlight" from the days when we didn't have proper spotlights or bulbs, ie a big bit of tube

for the (perfectly standard) bulb, with a narrower bit of tube attached to hold the bayonet base fitting. It has

proved to be the perfect thing for the Premier lamphouse - more on this when I have done you some pix.

You may recall I mentioned some time ago that I had purchased a small amount of Vitafilm; the blurb is on the

Camphor page. In February of this year, I followed the instructions and immersed 2 900' reels of 9.5 in Vitafilm

for 24 hours, then drained the surplus off and placed the film in a sealed can. I opened the can last week.

The film in question was a rarity in being one of the very few 9.5 films I have come across that have Vinegar

Syndrome (VS); there was a very powerful pong from this film. Vitafilm claims to be able to cure it by the method

I have outlined. If you are familiar with VS you will know that one effect is making the film go all floopy. There

seems to be a loss of symmetry in the film, with one side or other being slightly longer so that the film twists

and looks decidedly not flat. A practical effect is that the film has to be wound and re-wound under considerable

tension or the film layers wind very loosely and sag towards the bottom of the reel, so that it becomes impossible

to get it all on its reel. I doubt Vitafilm can cure this, tho' it could stop any further deterioration.

I can only give a progress report at this stage. I had a nasty shock when I opened the can; the Vitafilm had attacked

my beautiful, pristine black Pathé spools. Large areas were covered with little dots or bubbles. It was not quite

as bad as it looked, as a lot of the bubbles just wiped away, but the paint was left feeling slightly damp; I had

to bake the spools in the oven (sans film!) for 10 minutes to dry this up. However, my reels will never be quite the

same again. Seeing as I would not care to risk a fibre reel in anything remotely like Vitafilm, this means the only

option is an unpainted, all-metal reel, as I would not feel comfortable using the enamelled 1000' spools either.

Obviously, the floopiness of the film has not changed, but the vinegar smell is at the very least greatly reduced;

in its place is a fairly strong smell of Vitafilm, and I cannot quite persuade myself that I can't detect a faint whiff

of vinegar underneath. The film still appears pretty wet, so I may have to dry it off a bit and leave it a while before

I can really tell. Will keep you posted.

Dino Everett spotted a fascinating machine on ebay - an obvious clone of the 28mm Premier Pathescope - or

vice versa. Dino tends to the view the 35mm came first, a notion which seems logical and is supported by the

wonderfully primitive motor, with a very useful inching knob. But very few other changes apart from the

name plate.

There is a shaft at the back, absent from my 28mm version, which may have been for an external

motor, or an output to ......   what? The friction brake present on my 28 is missing, tho' there may be a hole

where it fits...... The most difficult feature to reconcile is that tiny two-bladed shutter. Is it original? I can't see

how anything that small could do the job, and a two-bladed one would maybe need to rotate faster anyway, which

would require changing gear ratios, which could be tricky.

The implication is that Pathescope Inc simply copied the 35mm machine - not much more than badge engineering -

and bought in a batch of surplus sewing machine motors (mine literally states that on its maker's plate) for the drive,

to overcome the shortcomings of the KOK and, no doubt, to cope with lack of supplies of the KOK from a France at war.

I wonder if there is any link to the Peerless company that made the early Triplico-type machine and the SP Wundatone?

I am now officially a grandfather, granddaughter having arrived today. Poppy.

Hard to imagine anyone wanting them, but here are some instructions for a Bingoscope. They seem to be only a

photocopy, since a printed admonition that the lenses and film guide-way "are apt to collect dirt", which should

be removed, was over the top corner of the leaflet. I have removed this and re-constituted what would have

been underneath. Enjoy.

I simply have not been able to make out what the word was under a particularly awkward blob on the

copy (see 2nd pic below, RH column. Anybody know?

Bin sorting thru hundreds of proj lamps to identify what I have and where it is. Could run a fleet of old B&H,

or Debrie (and probably L516 but I ent got to them yet). Also many exciter lamps, tho' an awful lot run at 4

amps and above and I assume are 35mm types. A sad entry in the lists is a box full of 110v 100w small-base pre-focus

lamps, all as new boxed. I think they are what early 16mm like the Kodascopes used. Alas, they will never be

of any use so have gone to the bin.

Have now added another set of instructions for the Bolex C/D range. These are quite early, with a swing-open

lamphouse shown.

Now working on my third Pathescope Premier 28mm projector, the second that is not mine . This one has a

different lamphouse, and came with grotty replacement arms and no shutter. Here are some pix.

I've shown the lamphouse with the back partly withdrawn. It's a little bit like a KOK lamphouse, with those runners

riding on the inside of the front part of the lamphouse, but here the runners protrude well beyond the rim of the

rear part. As you can imagine, when pushed fully home, the lamphouse is fairly shallow. The bulb it came with is

a nondescript thing about 3" high and less than 1" diameter, with no markings whatever. This one has the original

resistance; one hopes that originally the control lever was covered with some plastic fitment. The electrical

connections I have yet to sort out. The resistance has just a 2-pin plug (R in pic 4), with no sign of provision

for any other lead to enter the resistance cage.; this suggests it is in line with one side of the power supply, with

the other side connected direct to the mains (only 110v, thankfully). The centre 2-pin plug is presumably the mains

plug; this passes to the rather posh switch and then on to the base of the machine at the side. Another lead, L

in the pic, comes from the back of the projector and on first examination appears to have four pin sockets.

Haven't gone inside yet to see what is going on. (Turns out the sockets are connected in pairs inside, so

whichever way you plug the two-pin plug in, the result is the same. No idea why they did this).

Having been putting off the job for some time, I had a brainwave about the spool arms. The two shown here are

Debrie D16 top arms; the rounded base of the arm is little different from the original arms on my own machine. I

had to make the big securing nuts (not too dissimilar to the originals) and a fixing bolt, only one original having

survived. The hole in the Debrie arms was too big, so I made sleeves that were a force fit. The addition of a

locating pin for fixing the arms in place (like many 9.5 machines) completed the basic arm. The difficult bit,

of course, was always going to be the spool spindles. For the front arm, I re-used the tensioning arrangement

from the Debrie and used a "dog" collar as per the original, with lugs to engage the corresponding slots in the

spools. This collar, which I suspect may have come from a KOK, had been re-used in the bodged arms the

machine came with.

The rear arm just needs a pulley, which again I had to make. However, there was a wee snag. This pic

shows how the belt to the pulley passes thru a gap in the rear mech cover, with very little

clearance to spare. On the original machine, the arm is shorter than the Debrie arm, and

slung very low, so much so that I had to build a mini base to go under my projector to stop

my 1200' spool dragging on the deck. The low approach also looked wrong with the longer

arm, so I pitched it rather higher. Not that it would have made any difference since, with

the longer arm, there was in fact no position that would not involve the belt fouling the

mech cover. Now I dislike the sort of bodgery that thoughtlessly files away the relevant part of the cover

to overcome the problem. I don't like changing the original as you know, especially when it ent mine anyway.

Pix 3 & 4 in row 2 above shows my solution. At just the right point, there is a screw on the original which

secures a clip that holds wires out of the way. The screw passes right thru the casting, so I could access it

from the other side. It was a pretty fiddly job as space behind the gears was tight to work in. I even had

to cut a slot in the threaded end of the rod carrying the pulley so I could get a screwdriver to it from the

front of the machine - I just couldn't manage to screw it in from the back. I still have to complete the

spool retainer etc for this lower reel as you can see.

The shutter was relatively easy as I have done this before and had a pattern to work from. The shutter is

a bit larger than the original. I found with my machine that when I tried to use a short throw lens, the

shutter could be seen on screen at the side of the pic. So I built an enlarged version, and it is a copy of

this that I have made.

I have a fair bit more to do, and I spose there will have to be painting, which is always a chore. Will

try to show you the final result.

What with holidays and then the film fair at Argenteuil, it's been a busy month. I have added to the Debrie

section in 16mm some stuff about spool arms. These have always foxed me a bit, and I have discovered a

use for them as spool arms for a 28mm Premier Pathescope lacking same (inter alia), so have had to learn

more and took pix as I did it.

Bin on me 'ols, ain't I? I got arst for Instructions for a Bolex DA. Here's a first one; got some more, but need attention.

A better copy/scan would be welcome. Aunt Em has been at it again, too.

Mikael Barnard has acquired a couple of Ray machines, which show interesting (to a certain kind of mind!) variations.

This first one is like the one Trevor Adams has. The tranny is brown and is labelled "3/5/8V. 0.1 AMP", which

I guess would just flood the screen with light. Wiring the 3 outputs in various combinations gives the various voltages,

tho' as it is also labelled 200 - 250 Volts these must be pretty approximate. The maker's plate is a printed metal job.

Note the  neat, chemically-blackened interior components, with a reciprocating shutter (The similar-looking Bing

has no shutter).

In a bit more detail, here is what I assume to be a later model. The base is now wooden but, as it has eg slots for the

back plate to fit into, is presumably original. The "maker's plate" is now a stick-on paper thing, tho' it is red and we do get a red

flash on the flywheel (the addition of colour is a bit like a "go-faster" stripe on a modern car). The internal blackening

is gone, tho' the brass is not unappealing. I have shown the reciprocating shutter in both up and down positions. Note

the addition of velvet pads above and below the gate; scratching must have been bad without it if they went to

the trouble. The tranny is now black and now says 200 - 250v and 6v 0.8w, a veritable searchlight by comparison

with the earlier model.

The spool-holding arrangements seem to be designed for 60ft reels/cassettes; the 30-footer looks uncomfortable.

The older model has a spring on the retaining arm; the later one doesn't, tho' this could have been lost, but does

have an added retaining thing at the top of the back plate. Perhaps spring-loading did not work well with open

reels, as it would be pressing on the film, maybe scratching it, maybe catching on the reel. I can't figure the rewind.

There is a blind hole in the back of the plate the reel sits against. I could see this working with one of those cassette

rewinding doovers, pushed thru the core of a cassette, engaging the cassette's slot and riding in the blind hole. Except

the cassette has to be mounted the wrong way round for that to work. I fear we may have to break with all

established practice and consult the instructions. Anyone got some?

                                                            ----------------------------------------------------------

I thought it would be interesting to compare these two. The 16mm machine has far more twiddly bits than the 8mm,

such as the lamp brightness control with meter on the back, but the similarities are marked. The 16 has a spring-loaded

flap just above the top loop guide mark. Underneath is a big felt pad, obviously a form of oil reservoir.

Here, courtesy the PPT, is a very early Bolex of the PA/DA shape. This is a Model C, 16mm only. Note the ornate logos,

the pushmi-pullyu still frame device, the switch (far more use than the direction change lever we got later), the one-piece

lamphouse with simple pin fixing and ornate top. I think that, with the front adjuster leg out of the way, the lamphouse

will swing open, maybe to keep light from the film until you were ready. Less obviously, there are no moveable sprocket

retainers. The rollers are held in place with nuts, hidden behind a large gearwheel inside the mech. Which means that to

clean them, I had to remove the pin on the sprocket shaft, unscrew the grub-screw in the sprocket, remove the lamphouse

and the back of the projector and slide out the large gear wheel on the other end of the sprocket shaft. It now runs

bootiful, tho'. I also noted that it has a mesh filter much like the heat filter on later machines, which operates centrifugally.

The shutter (2 blades only) is much thicker metal than the later paper-thin jobbies. The rewind handle is removable but,

remarkably, has survived.

Have you come across this? Technicolor produced mini projectors, either side of the emergence of Super 8,

to show pre-loaded cassettes, basically for industrial education use. I acquired a Std 8 and a Super 8 and loads

of cassettes from the coal industry many years ago, and played around with putting Super 8 silent films in

some of the cassettes - there is a little doover and instructions to help wind them the right way for the

endless loop to work properly. You can project direct or via a right angle mirror, either built into a box with

a little screen like this, or freestanding.

The lens was very short throw, but of very good quality. Larry Pearce sold the machines off cheap many years

ago, and also re-sleeved the lenses from some to fit projectors such as the Vox - a very welcome solution to

my domestic projection problems at the time.

Anyway, all this has re-emerged as I continue the great clear-out and, should there be anyone out there

foolish enough to want it, it is yours, but you'll have to fetch from Leighton Buzzard or Sheffield.

Actually, on reflection I thought I might as well record the whole thing for the site, so here are more pix.

One of the problems of all this moving house is sorting thru 3 decades of accumulation, even discounting

what I brought with me in the first place. I have about 32 Babies (by serial number count), ranging from

bare main casting to almost complete, to ones I regard as part of my collection and are complete with

a variety of accessories. There are also huge numbers of bits, especially Super attachments, and lots of

mazac'd flywheels that one day I may replace.

Also got far too many B&H Model 621 onwards, to which if anyone can offer them a good home they are

welcome. Ditto Debrie picture heads, pretty much complete, with the rounded base but no amps to

put them on, tho' transformer supply is good.

And does no-one want a GS1200? I had Bill Parsons fettle it; the only slight flaw is the rewind is sluggish

being what as how original motors were no longer available and an alternative had to be fitted when

the original busted. It is of course a completely separate motor from the rest of the machine, which is

fine.

One never ceases to learn new stuff or understand things that were not apparent earlier. Only a small point,

but in conversation with Bob Andrews and Mikael Barnard recently it came out that even the commercial

cinema in the early days operated in some cases with a single projector and breaks between reels, heralded

by much the same "Continued in Part x" titles that we are familiar with on 9.5. I don't know why, but I had

always assumed that this did not happen commercially. In particular, I had assumed that 17.5 silent was

shown using two projectors as the reel capacity was a mere 500ft; obviously, audiences were well used to

the frequent breaks and learned to live with them. Not unlike advertising breaks on TV?

Encouraged by my success, I turned my hand to another Lux YD. This one had two problems. First, there was

a framing problem, with about half a sprocket hole showing on screen all the time. I initially tried to fix this

by putting a shim under the top fitment for the (removable) gate, but then I thought, no, because both parts

of the gate are together as a single unit, so they surely can't get out of line with each other. Meanwhile,

perhaps because of all this fiddling, the notching mech had gone out of kilter and tho' the machine would

stop at a notch, it refused to restart. I had a poke about and identified  the screw adjuster, accessible only

from the back of the machine. This seems to determine the exact location of a small arm that pivots when a

notch appears  (being connected to the notcher in the gate), and withdraws to allow the notch timer linkage

(see B4, 11th July) to drop, so engaging the follower with the worm and initiating the notching cycle. This arm,

as far as I can see, must not protrude too far or the notch timer linkage is unable to fall, or too little, in which

case the linkage fails to "catch" on the small pivoting arm and so the notch fails to work. I fiddled with the

adjuster screw position a bit, and the notcher now seems to work correctly.

On test, the half sprocket hole no longer appeared on screen. The only thing I can think of is that I seem to recall

fiddling a bit with a screw that is part of the spring arrangement that links and hinges the two parts of the gate.

Perhaps I accidentally put it right - I shall have to keep an eye on this, but I am not now going to fiddle with a Lux

that is working satisfactorily. I have another YD and a YC, which has the same sort of notching mechanism, to

sort out, so I'll look more closely then.

There are other things that may affect the operation of the notching timer. One is the exact angle of the bend

in the follower; it needs to be at an angle sufficient to allow it to track along the worm smoothly, the worm

thread, of course, being by definition at an angle rather than square. Another possible influence is the forked

spring which sits between the follower and the side of the main casting - you can just see one tip in A1. It

presumably cushions the follower when it springs back after a notch, but if it stands too far from the side

of the main casting it can prevent the tip of the follower from engaging with the worm by keeping it far

enough out to snag on the stripper plate. And this is without getting into the notch tripping mech itself,

which is a whole other can of beans and which I have not yet addressed. Anyway, all of this fiddling seems to

have worked, as the notching mech now seems to work OK.

I have been getting in touch with my inner Lux once more. This time it's the claw and notching mechanism on

a YD.

Let's call these pix Row A and Row B,  with the number of the picture, eg  A4 is the follower, at the end of the first row.

The first 4 (ie all of Row A) you have seen before, they are just repeated for convenience. They are a mix of YC and YD,

tho' the basic mechs are the same, the main change being the gate. Let's get that out of the way first; B1 is a pic

extracted from a much bigger one just to show the retaining device for the bottom of the YD gate. In the centre is the

pivot, to the right the spring and its anchoring point and to the left the handle and the "nose" that goes into the foot of

the gate, as can be seen in A2.

Now compare A2 with B2, which has most of the claw mech removed. I have to say, the whole claw/notching mech looks

to be, and is, insanely complex. Start with B2; the circular thing on the left has a little cam which I thought at first was

attached but is in fact loose. It is secured only by the screw NB THE SCREW HAS A LEFT HAND THREAD! which passes

thru the claw retaining disc, then this little cam, and screws into a hole in the circular thing. (I think I'd better name it

the cam carrier.) It's dead fiddly to get them all lined up on re-assembly, particularly as there is some pull from one of

the many springs involved. Then there is that weird little thing on a spring (tension spring and bearing in B3) of which

I know not the function. It just sits there loose, held in [place only due to the pull of its spring.

You can see in A2 where all these bits go - the notch timer linkage lies behind the large central cam and has a

spring pulling it downwards - you can see the lower end in A2. In B2, I have marked the holes thru which the two

"legs" on the left of the cam follower (A4) pass; the upper "leg" is spring-loaded (A2 again). This leg is a snug fit in

bearings in both the main body casting and the notch timer linkage itself. The lower leg is looser in its hole and and

has scope to move in the arc of the lower hole seen in B2, the upper hole being the pivot point. (Note also in B2 the

oil channels marked in red.)

In A1 you can see the cam follower in situ, with it's right-hand leg (the spring-loaded one) journalled in a plain bearing

mounted on the rear mech plate. So far as I can tell ( I ent sussed the whole of the notching mech yet), when a notch

appears in the gate, it allows the notch timer linkage to drop at the left-hand end, so bringing the cam follower into

engagement with the spiral worm (A1). The follower then tracks across the worm and is knocked up and out of the worm

by a stud or pin at the RH end. This is clearly visible in A1. (And isn't it all just like a miniature version of the mech in the

Baby?) The knocking-up movement brings the notch timer linkage arm up again, where it seems to be caught and held by

another bit of the mech, allowing the claw to re-engage with the film.

At least, that is the theory. The notching mech on the Lux is notoriously temperamental and I was taking this one apart

because it would not operate right. I think the problem is that over time, one or more of these bearings wears, or

mazac distortion sets in, and affects the alignment of the three bearing points in which the upper follower arm rides.
Furthermore, the "drive" from the tip of the follower that engages with the worm is inevitably off-square. The result

of all this is that the follower's shaft comes to be slightly out of true in its bearings. This can create an amazingly strong

resistance to movement or even a total jam.  When the shaft jams, the tip of the follower is forced up out of the spiral

groove of the worm and itself can then jam against the "stripper plate" which guides the tip under for the outward leg in

the groove and over for the return flip. Each time this happens of course more strain is put on the mech and things

bend or go out of alignment even more.
Sometimes the follower does not go right across and so is not thrown clear for the return by the stud at the end of the

worm. This may be due to the same jamming problem, just at a slightly later point, with the tip of the follower clear

of the stripper plate but sticking and not tripping back. It may also be affected by the amount of end play on the shaft

carrying the worm - I put some extra spacing between the big gear and the cover plate with the bearings.

The solution is rather more problematic.
It seemed to me that the end of the follower's shaft only just reached into the bearing on the mech cover plate at the time

just before the follower started to track along the worm; it was at a slight angle and so seemed to be jamming
immediately. I made a new shaft with a slightly longer stretch that side of the fixing point between shaft and follower.

This may in itself bring a problem if it sticks out too far and so fouls the outer mech cover. But the original shaft also

seemed worn and even grooved so I thought it best to replace; even a very small difference in diameter could be part

of the jamming problem. (Note that this shaft is held in place in the follower by a grub screw with a pin the passes thru

a hole in the shaft.) This in itself did not work. Initially, the insertion of very thin washers under two of the

screws that hold the mech cover plate seemed to help, but it soon reverted to jamming. I spent a lot of time smoothing

and polishing the shaft, or fitting washers in different combinations, dismantling and reassembling innumerable times.

It was at this point that I decided to remove most of the claw mech to see if I could identify any other problem.

You will see in B4 that the notch timer linkage has a screw above the bearing, which goes into a trapped nut behind;

there is in fact in a slot in the upper part of the linkage. Below this is a separate piece, which pivots round the bearing and

has a limited range of adjustment by virtue of this slot. The slot in the screw head was well worn and difficult to

tighten effectively, so I replaced it. Setting this at the precisely correct position seems to be part of the solution;

certainly, after a bit of fiddling I got much better results. I shall now have to do extended testing to ensure this is not

another false dawn.

I have two apologies to make. First, 'er indoors and I are seriously considering a move to Sheffield, about 120 miles

from here. If we can find a house that will enable me to continue with my cine activities, and hopefully actually

improve my facilities (as I am so short of space here I've had to rent some self-storage space), we shall be off. It is,

however, an extremely time-consuming business finding a very rare type of property that will suit both me and 'er,

and also doing all the de-cluttering that this place needs. So, many cine-related activities are pretty much on

hold at present. I've had to pack away the Heurtier to make room to finish off some projects (not all for me,

by any means!).

My second apology is to a small group of people who have tried to contact me via this site. I recently changed

my email provider and therefore email address, but was promised I would still get emails for the old address.

Trust me, you should not believe anyone who tells you this. However, I did discover subsequently that the old

email address was still alive and living on the website of my old provider. So I finally got in, trawled thru

literally hundreds of emails and selected a few that were from cine people to transfer to my new address. I have

tried to reply to these, but I maybe got it wrong and should have replied via the old provider's website. So, if

you emailed to me via my website and have heard nothing, I do apologise. Pease try again; it should now be

fixed that emails come to my new address. If you have a continuing problem, ring me on my mobile so we can

get sorted out. Number is Oh, double seven, five, seven, two thousand five hundred, sixty-eight. Excuse paranoia

about setting it out properly -  I seem to get junk even to my phone these days.

Suffering further domestic upheaval with more decorating and trips 'oop North, but I do manage to go into the garage

and poke the Heurtier occasionally. I am coming to the conclusion that the claw gets bent out of shape either in the

initial re-installing of the total assembly or, more likely, when trying to change gauge with the cam and claw not in

the correct alignment. The claw appears to be spring-loaded; it needs moving about before it will slide over the cam

when re-mounting the assembly. Although it can't really be seen in the pic (6 below), the triple cam has one area

where all 3 cams segments for the three gauges are at the same level, ie there is a common "flat" (in fact, rounded)

area. I am theorising that if everything is correctly aligned, when changing gauge the claw slides across the "flat"

area and so does not get bent.

Let me try to explain with this pic. The gauge change knob - the serrated black plastic thingy - has

slots or grooves for each gauge. Above the black knob is a spring-loaded silver knob, with a rod that

fits into these grooves, so providing positive engagement. There are also "stops" at each end of the

black knob's travel to prevent it being turned too far and causing damage. The silver knob can only

be pulled out to allow the knob to be turned to change gauge when a slot in the inching knob - in

the centre of the gauge-change knob - is next to the spring-loaded rod to enable the rod to be pulled

out. Otherwise, the inching knob fits tight up against the rod to prevent it being moved. The inching knob is held

onto the main drive shaft carrying the cam by a grub screw which tightens against a flat on the shaft, so it can only

go on in one place/position. The cam has no pre-fixed position and is simply held in place (when you find the place)

by a pair of grub screws. So my guess is that one must position the cam so that, when the inching knob is aligned to

allow the spring-loaded knob to be pulled out, the "flat" is correctly positioned. Since the claw is spring-loaded, but

not necessarily in a straight up, down, in or out position (because there are 2 springs) I now have to figure out

what the correct cam position is.

I think I have already got the in and out location of the cam, ie 32.25mm from the end of the shaft to the bush. I

have had problems with getting the gate to go in; this seems to be because the claw gets easily bent out of shape

and is then angled slightly out of line and so fouls the security device which ensures you can only insert the correct

gate for the gauge that has been selected (you have to remove any gate before you can change gear).

Much of this will of course be clear already to anyone who has operated a Heurtier, but I hoe that info on the way

the cam and claw inter-relate may be useful if you ever have to dismantle one. Wouldn't it be nice if we had service

manuals instead of having to try to figure it all out oneself?

14th June

I have had to go further into the Heurtier; here are the pix.

My problem was that the claw seemed to be bent out of its correct flat shape and it had to come out for

straightening. You can see the framing mech in the first two pix; it's a ring that goes round the main claw shaft and

cam. It seems to be connected to the body only by that spring; you can see in pic two the long pivot on which

the back of the claw travels horizontally to change gauge and is moved vertically for framing by that thin serrated-

edged wheel on the outside. Note in pic 3 the different thicknesses of the claw pins; I gather it is fairly normal for

only one pin on any claw to do most of the work, with others as back-up.

Pix 4 & 5 show how the claw rides in its carrier. The exploded view in the final pic should help show how it all fits

together. Note in pic 4 the three pins on the circumference of the narrower part of the carrier. These engage with

a set of spiral grooves inside the black plastic gauge-change knob. The spring is placed between the narrower part of the

carrier and the knob. You have to push the carrier against the spring until the pins and grooves engage in order to

re-assemble. Needless to say, there are two wrong positions at which these can engage and only one right. The felt

pads, suitably soaked in oil, surround the claw and cam. You can see how it all slots together in pic 3 from 5th June

below.

The cam is made of some sort of fibre/composition material, not metal. But now look closely at the claw shuttle in

pic 3; the internal shape seems weird in the extreme and, if the cam was not fibre, you would swear it was wear.

But how could a fibre cam do that? Note that the exact position of the cam on the shaft is obviously critical, so

that when you pass the cam on its shaft thru the claw shuttle, into the bearing that is in the gauge-change knob,

it ends up in exactly the correct position for each gauge. I have had to do it by trial and error; presumably they

had a better way. There seems, incidentally, to be no way at all to remove the pulleys from the shaft, which

would have made the whole business a lot easier.

The last piece on the right of the exploded pic is a sort of inching knob, which also is part of the mech that locks

the knob in place for any particular gauge.

I will let you know if it all works when I have re-assembled the thing.

Closer examination of the Heurtier Supertri suggests the fixing of the gears is less flimsy than I first thought. There

may be a "keyway", ie a slot in both gear and shaft into which a small piece of metal fits, providing positive

engagement. It must be pretty tiny, mind. Having got it the rest of the way apart, it seems obvious what the

principal cause of seizing up must have been.

Pic 3 shows there are two big fat felt discs around the claw/cam area. They were bone dry and absorbed a lot of oil,

without starting to leak it out again. This seems to be an increasingly common syndrome. An old projector, maybe

unused for years, is pressed back into service and one hesitates to put too much oil in, remembering all those

injunctions in instruction books not to over-oil. So it never gets enuff oil to re-charge felt reservoirs or penetrate

fully to all the surfaces needing oil, which are anyway covered with a layer of old, dried-up gunk which has become

sticky and is certainly not doing the lubricating job it was originally applied to do. It may well be that a major

overhaul every 40 to 50 years is sensible. Another thing I found with this particular machine was that the mech as seen

in pic 4 was stiff. I wondered whether maybe fibre gears tend to grow very slightly over time, eg due to absorbing oil.

You can see in pic 4 two big screws on the side of the black plastic mount for the shutter shaft. These enable

adjustment of the meshing of the shutter shaft gear with the mech, which helped a bit. There is a further screw

on the top of the same mount, which seems to have a spring under it. Easing this a little helped even more, tho'

to be honest I'm not exactly sure what it does.

Incidentally, the lens mount/claw assembly unit in pix 3 & 4 may look metallic, but it seems in fact to be some

kind of resin or plastic.

I cannot believe it's nearly 2 months since I last posted here; it's not as tho' there haven't been things going on.

And I have been away for one long weekend and then an entire week in the period.

Let's get straight in with another splendid series of pix from Dave Richardson. These are of miniature titling

outfits designed to attach to the front of a Baby camera or a Motocamera, the latter having 2 different size kits.

Why did anyone ever need anything else?

Had a nice visit to Ruislip for the new Ealing. Amongst the things I acquired was a Bell and Howell TQ1 converted

to 9.5, reportedly by Burgess Lane, many moons ago. It ran, but with poor volume and all sorts of extraneous noise

from the amp and controls. The job was in some ways well done - the sound reader lens had been moved across

so the film was the right way round for projection. However, the gate is decidedly dodgy with the sprung portion

comprising a lower and an upper section, joined by a piece set back from them to give clearance. I'll do you a pic.

And while the sound reader had been moved across, the exciter had not! A peculiar little mirror-cum-lens had been

bolted to the inside of the exciter lamp cover to direct the light across. I suppose it must have worked to deliver

any sound at all, which it did. It was not helped, however, by the fitting of a 6v exciter lamp when there was

only 3.9v going into it, giving a very orange light. I decided to move the lamp across, and doing this kept me

happily occupied for many hours over a number of days. I'll do you some pix. What it does not have (yet) is any

tracking adjustment for the sound.

In this, as so many other things, I was helped by advice from Noel Pratt. Noel has always been ready to lend an

ear and give me the benefit of his advice and experience and I owe him a great deal. I thought it was time to record

my appreciation of his help over many years.

I have a Heurtier Super-Tri silent projector in pieces on the bench at the moment. It's been awaiting attention

for several years, having more or less completely seized up. It's a bugger to take apart - it seems to have been

made deliberately difficult - and at the moment I'm not at all sure I can manage to get it back together. I got

around to it because of some questions from another collector, who had bought a Heurtier Universal that, despite

good packaging, had been damaged. Part of the damage was to a double gear that drives the triple sprockets, and it

was not at all clear how the thing was supposed to be. In fact, what we have is two thin gears (about 1/16th thick

each), possibly cut together as a single piece. These are at the end of a shaft, with no obvious indication as to

how they are held in place. My contact's gears were loose on the shaft, I had to do some dismantling to be quite

sure they were supposed to be fixed, so I thought I might as well sort the Super-Tri out and kill two birds with

one stone. It looks to me a poor piece of engineering - the gears seem to be fixed by a combination of heat-shrinking

and peening, by which I mean in this case that a pointy thing seems to have been bashed into the join between shaft

and gears to force them into each other a bit. I don't like it - seems too fragile for such a vital part. It's no doubt

due to the size restrictions imposed by the design of the triple-sprocket assembly. Again, I shall do you some pix.

I cannot recall if I ever showed you this:-

The Comète, as I understand it, is a French conversion of a Chinese 16mm. This appeared at the Group 9.5 auction,

where I bid on behalf of Patrick Moules and got it very cheap as it had mechanical and amp problems. The

mechanical problems were easy to fix, but I had to pass it to a radio repair man for the amp. I also had to improve

the exciter lamp set-up. There is some provision for moving the film in relation to the sound reader, but it's a bit

crude and tricky and could do with a major re-think. That said, the conversion is a quality job and the results I

can only call superb, with plenty of "top" and great clarity from the sound.

Bin mucking about with Dansons again. Have now got a Beam Echo, ie somewhat later, machine working well.

Interestingly, I think it's rather less well finished both cosmetically and in engineering terms than the earlier

one currently on the bench. Inter alia, it has an unusual photocell, just a round tube with two wires emerging

from the end. I'm still learning how best to do Dansons; here are some points I've come across recently. The

damping roller between the lower sprocket feed out and the take-up arm can foul the casing if you need to

take the mech out. See pic 1 below for the simple precaution of a rubber band.

Dismantling the Danson is at first easy. There are four screws on the underside that retain the amp. This is

one of the ways the beam Echo  is lower standard; it uses ordinary wood screws, not even proper self-tappers!

But before you remove these, disconnect the multi-way plug that connects the projector to the amp and the

co-ax plug that connects to the PEC. Both can be seen clearly in pix 2 & 4 below. Make sure the tilting feet at the front

of the projector are unscrewed as for maximum tilt. It should now be possible to slide the amp out, altho' I

have found that the tranny still can get fouled up on the tilting foot casing, so great care is needed. Also, the

big capacitor, seen on the left in pic 2, may also get hitched up. The two plugs you have removed

also pose a risk, so you need to unhitch them several times as you gradually ease the amp out. This is the

time to take a hacksaw to the tube in which the front tilt foot is housed and remove the top half inch - it

really isn't needed and the alternative is that you will one day damage the tranny wiring and render it useless.

Having done that, removing the mech from the casing is fairly easy. There are four Pathé-style nuts (no facets

and a slot across the middle) on the front of the machine, clearly visible in pic 3 above.  Once they are removed,

the whole mech should come out, tho' age etc may make it stick and/or rot the rubber grommets thru which the

fixing screws pass. In pic 1 you can see the fixing screws after you remove the mech

This is when it starts to get tricky, so I'll leave that for now.

I had a major problem with the Beam Echo Danson.

Pix 1 & 2 show the exciter lamp socket front and rear. The screws pass thru the main plate of the mech from behind.

You can only get at them by removing the lamphouse, fan, flywheel, condenser and bearing block and the main gear

wheel. The front should have 2 lugs, but they broke off because this part is, as you will have guessed, made of Mazac.

The function of the lugs can be explained with the help of the next two pix. The lamp goes into the socket from the

front, and meets a springy strip which is the centre contact for the lamp (visible in the final pic above). The lamp is

held in place by the gizmo on the left; it has two pins which, if you squeeze the sides of this part, could be inserted

in the aforementioned lugs, which stood proud of the flat surface of the holder in pic 1. You can probably see where

I filed them off flat. Because, of course, I tried repair first and actually succeeded with one, but the second then

went too and the whole thing started to crumble, as you can see. For some reason, presumably ventilation, there are

holes drilled so close to the periphery that their outer edges had crumbled. So I had to make a new one, and it's

actually quite a complex little thing. Note also the screw-threaded thingy at the other end of the gizmo; this passes

thru the hole in the cover and a sort of nut (very like those used when you fit switches thru a hole in a plate) then

goes on and holds the whole thing together.

The end result can be seen in the final pic. I made it in two sections, because I could see some bits would be tricky if

I didn't. You can see the screws that secure the outer part to the inner; the join is where you can see the separate levels

in the middle. I also decided to avoid lugs and use a complete circle, as I wanted the extra strength. You can see the

cut-outs that accommodate the pins on the inner gizmo. It has to be fairly precise so that you can squeeze fit the gizmo

without having to squeeze it so much that the lamp gets in the way. There is also the cut-out for the centre contact,

and a slot for a little spring contact onto the side of the lamp, which I would not have thought necessary. This aligns

with a slight enlarging of the hole in the mech plate to accommodate the screw that holds this spring. I got mine in

the wrong place by a small amount and had to file away a bit more of the mech plate in consequence. Everything has

to be just so or there's a problem. You can see I replicated the holes round the periphery where I had room.

Anyway, I think I have finally reached the end of my current Danson work and 3 of the machines will now be going

to their respective homes. I could not of course resist the photo-opportunity.

From the left, we have a working machine but a bit noisy and no spool arms; I shall keep this as a spares machine.

Then there is The Beautiful Blue Danson (waltz by Strauss), which I am putting aside for now and will look at later.

Then we have a couple of Danson-branded machines, followed by the lighter Beam Echo. Finally, the manky object

on the end, enlarged in the next pic, is a very early speaker when the Safar brand was more obviously in evidence,

tho' it still appears on some parts into the Beam Echo era, viz and to wit the exciter lamp holder pictured above.

The speaker was incidentally donated by Tony Reypert. I think a clean and a light spray with metallic silver would

make it look pretty good.

Dave Richardson has come up with yet another bit of Midas info.

The last image is an amendment that was pasted across the second half of pic 1; we have tried to read and reproduce

the underlying text. David also drew my attention to Grahame Newnham's website, www.pathefilm.freeserve.co.uk.

This states:-  "By 1937 the original Midas was being sold off (by 'John Browning - Scientific Instrument Makers' still using

the Bush House address) at 35/- - that is £1.75 - and a modified model advertised which had a dropper resistance for

mains use and 300ft spools mounted on a base-board with rollers to feed the film in and out of the camera/projector

..... prices were from £4-15sh-0d (£4.75) - see the ACW December 1937 page 339." The mains option is probably

why there is a plug sticking out of the back of David's Midas-on-a-board.

                                                                                    ------------------------------------------------------

Trevor Adams' recent bombardment of me with pix of fascinating projectors began because I queried the name of

one of the ones he had sent previously as being unsuitable for a decent, respectable web site. The machine in

question was sold by a man called Cummings under the dubious name of Cum-0-Graph. Trev also sent the following

reminiscence.......... I added the (y).

"In the "old days", kids were encouraged, by certain seed(y?) companies, to
become door-to-door salesmen. The company sent you (the kid), a parcel of
seed packets which you then sold to long suffering relatives and
neighbours. Money received was returned to the parent seed company and
as a reward they sent you (the kid), a crystal radio or Daisy BB gun or a
book (yuk), or a Cum-O-Graph projector! Although these machines had wee
paraffin lamps, Cummings supplied directions for converting them to
electricity. The C-O-G came as 28mm or 35mm (don't think you got a choice).
Now this form of "reward for services rendered" existed right up into my
childhood. I sold my seeds and took a Daisy BB gun as payment though! "

What a great story!
 

Bin changing service provider as well as computer. You should be able to use the old email address still,

but if problems arise ring me on 07757 250068. As you know, showing an email address on line is asking for trouble.

Keith Cockayne has sent me some fascinating pix of an Elf converted to 9.5 by the late John Cunningham. Moreover,

it has an added mech for16mm mag tape, making it a hybrid double-band machine, and a colour wheel to enable it

for Kinemacolor. John also converted a 16m camera to go with it.

The first 3 pics are higher res than the others, which are also too fiddly to get rid of all the background but

worth including, I think.

Mikael Barnard has pointed out that true Kinemacolor did not use blue; Keith explains that this was added by John

Collinson to get a blue sky on projection, which was otherwise missing. Note that the blue is not present on the camera

attachment.

Trevor Adams in NZ has sent me a raft of stuff I am still processing. Here is a taster, a nearly-not-cine-at-all toy.

It is very similar in concept to one I found on eBay a while ago which I think may already be on this site - but

I can't find it! Pl let me know of any sighting.

Here is a very unusual machine I have just bought on French eBay. More later.

I can hardly believe I have never visited here before: http://www.filmstips.com. It's Trevor Adams in NZ again, and has

the most amazing array of rare, unusual and strange things from the "toy" end of the projector and film viewer range. It

includes an Ace with continuous loop attachment and many things I had never even heard of. A must see!

Trev has also explained that the Moviegraphs I posted under 28mm are in fact 35mm, and has sent pix of the correct one.

Dave Humphrey has sent some pix of a very neat little Piccolo and a 9.5 Alef.

Bin doing a lot of fiddling about with the site, eg I have made the "Toy" projector page alphabetical to

help find things. Don't forget the Projector Index where I try to give a link to any make on the site.
 

Couple of random pix I found while looking for something else. What I had forgot to do.

Please, if I say I will do something, keep me up to the mark by reminding me, as my memory is very poor.

Sorry, Keith!

The Agfa Sonector above (tho' a poor pic probably from eBay) provides an interesting illustration. Because of the very

long sound/pic separation, add-on approaches like this were simple. When Kodak changed all the rules

when they introduced  Super 8, this was not possible and, given that cine always seems to have been an

impoverished hobby in this country, may account for some of the virulence I recall from the opposition.

Not only was a new machine needed, you could no longer buy silent and creep up gradually on sound, but

had to go straight to a sound machine.

Trevor Adams, NZ, has really come up trumps on the Screnus, without being asked; he must have read my

comment below. Always very encouraging when one gets a sign that someone has read my site, 'cos the amount

of feedback is v. limited.

Trevor's pix are particularly helpful in making sense of the pic in the ACW review (repeated left) by showing

separately the removable lamp unit. Trev says:-

"I think the case is made from pressed aluminium-so it's just a bit flasher than a tobacco tin I guess.
The faceplate is marked SCRENUS Cine Camera. To the right of the nameplate is a wee lever which you adjust

to "Take" or "Project". This device simply changes the aperture. The camera viewfinder is a simple reflex on

which would have been a dog to use in sunlight!
Without  a decent flywheel, cranking film is quite jerky. The barrel-type shutter and single claw seem to work

adequately and the machine, in motion, yields a foot-wide picture. The projector's tubular lamphouse is quite

clever and contains the condenser lens and light source .It is easily removed and replaced. I'm using a standard

6volt bulb.
Can't help but think that using a Screnus would have been quite an expensive way to learn about movie making.

Even used carefully it tends to abuse film! The firm's motto, "From scene to screen in one machine" - is probably

the best thing about this device!"

I now have so much on camjectors I've given them a page.

Trevor Adams has a Ray. He also found an ad from Meccano (TM) mag. I'll repeat the ad from below, too.

On the subject of Camera Projectors (see 1st and 5th April below), ACW reviewed the Campro in August 1935.

In October, it was the Screenus, tho' the pic is not that helpful. I shall ask Trevor.

You may recall Illustra Enterprises. I remember Peter Spooner telling me of his frequent visits there; he

described it as something of an Aladdin's cave, piled high with cine stuff. The proprietor was obviously

a bit of a wheeler-dealer, as evidenced by the items in his lists. Later, he bought the 17.5mm Library

from Pathescope when they lost interest in it after the successful launch of 9.5 sound.  Peter wrote

about Illustra in Flickers, many years ago. Here are some adverts of Illustra wares and a projector review.

The "Illustra" projector reviewed by ACW is not only obviously an Alef, it actually says so on the side.

I saw one once (see photo) and my impressions of it were rather better than the Reviewer's. I suspect

the 35mm machine is also an Alef.

First time I've come across an ad for the Ray. Don't recall ever hearing of the Argus camera.

An interesting "universal" version of the idea seen in the Pathex and Bolex sound-on-disc machines. The blurb

seems to concentrate on home recording; of course, by this time the cinema was no longer using the discs,

so they would not be available.

Got this Graflex. Here are a couple of inside shots; gotta re-do the outside pic. It's got piano-key type controls and a threading lever

to help set the loop I think. Problem with this is the motor seems busted - it turns, but with no power and it seems a major winding has

gone. Problematic to find a new motor. It's from Bodine Electrical of Chicago, 230v, 1/30 HP, 1425 rpm, 1.5MFD capacitor. To their

credit, Bodine responded promptly to my email but, as I had expected, they made it specially for the Graflex long ago and have

nothing like it now. It seems to me we need a source of small, capacitor-run induction motors. Anyone got any ideas? I spose one

could try cannibalising a B&H for a  rather different type of motor......I have a vague idea there were other projectors like the Graflex,

with a different badge. I know there were a number of different badged versions of the Bauer P7 type.

David Richardson is doing some clearing out and has found something that I was afraid existed - a Super Attachment

for a Midas Camera/Projector. You may recall I have a Midas 300' reel, so I guessed this might exist. No, it is not an April Fool

- it really exists.

Bin rummaging thru old mags again, in this case Home Movies and Home Talkies from 1939.

                                                            ----------------------------------------------------------

A thought that I have been pondering of late. Why are some16mm sound projectors so complicated, notably the Bell

& Howell machines from the 620 onwards, but other machines too. Do they really need to be so heavily

engineered and complex for the job they have to do?  To the extent of needing special tools to do certain work on them?

Bear in mind also that 16mm was a very limited medium in professional terms. Picture was small, track was small,

oddly compressed and with inevitably limited frequency range. It was just not capable of doing justice to all that

engineering, nor were audiences sufficiently discerning to care - such small "improvements" as might be delivered

would be lost on them. One wonders if it was a ploy to justify high prices? If anyone wants to comment, I'm happy to

include their views here (within reason, of course).

Dino Everett has gotten his hands on a 16mm sound-on-disc machine and has posted a film of it in operation at

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DstGOaum8QM

w we have nada; I await further guidance.

I have been dabbling with Dansons again, having got the latest amp back from Paul. My original Danson is now up and running, with a new belt (and as a result, a new flywheel). One of Patrick’s 3 original machines is working but running slow; I have hesitated to meddle because of the flywheel issue, and instead moved on to the machine destined to be Paul’s bribe. The flywheel came off with no trouble, but the machine seemed fast enough so I didn’t replace the belt. The speed control was not functioning, however, which proved to be because of a fairly spectacularly melted capacitor.

I have learned yet again just how anti-people projectors can be. I had the amp and the mech in and out umpteen times, cos you can’t get to do anything without full access to the mech. All the clearances in there are incredibly tight, the result of trying to pack so much into such a limited space. On my first attempt, the mech barely turned over, and was almost impossible to move with the inching knob, which is anyway quite high-geared. I discovered that the exact position of the flywheel on its shaft is critical to both letting the mech move reasonably freely and, even more vital, with ensuring the single sprocket is actually in the right plane to and fro – otherwise it don’t match the film guides/retainers or, indeed, the sound track reader. To help free the mech, I also removed a dished, sprung washer from the back bearing of the fan. It wasn’t present on my machine, and removing it seemed to help a lot.

I have had continual trouble with fitting the spool arms back into their homes in the front door of Dansons. This was because of the take-up pulley, which simply did not fit. This meant one had to remove it (it came off far too easily and I had to tweak the fitting a bit) with no place to put it, so it just sloshed around loose. However, with this machine I discovered that a place to put it existed on the back door, a small shaft just like the one on the spool arm itself. This was obviously missing on mine.

Another thing I discovered was the danger of too much oil. There is a limited centralised oiling system, with a little reservoir with felt in it. It was, of course, bone dry, so I gave it some oil. I subsequently found oil dripping from the end of the flywheel shaft straight onto one of the valves. In a typical example of laziness, I declined to remove amp and mech for the 37^th time and poked a rag down thru the oil hole with a screwdriver; a few repetitions of this soaked up much of the excess. You see what I mean about projectors hating people? (well, me at least).

One thing that did work well was replacing the rubber bushes on which the mech is mounted - I think mounting the amp flexibly is more common. I found two sizes of standard rubber cable grommets did a good job. The larger ones fitted the mounting holes – just, and with a lot of bullying. Smaller ones I cut in two and discarded the centre section. As mounted, we have the mounting pin sticking out from the mech, onto which is placed one of the small half-grommets. The pin is then passed thru the larger grommets, as bullied into the mounting holes, then a second half-grommet, a washer and finally the nut. (Interestingly, these nuts are like the ones often found on Pathé machines, round and with a screw slot).

One mod that I am making to all the Dansons I have is to saw off the top of the threaded tube for one of the front feet. This tube is far longer than it needs to be to do its job, and it fouled the main tranny each time you move the amp – as is obvious from the visible damage. You may recall that anyway one has to unscrew the feet to get the amp in or out at all.

When I re-started my Danson dabbling, it was borne in on me that I had promised two working machines to Patrick and one to Paul, but only had three pairs of spool arms (and two speakers, three if you count the one I passed on to Paul a couple of years back), leaving me a bit bereft. However, this time providence smiled on me in the form of a very kind gentleman who had contacted me some months ago via the website. The weather having improved, he duly rolled up with, inter alia, a beautiful, shiny, hardly used Danson in a beautiful blue colour, with matching speaker and a spare grey speaker! Oh frabjous day! So now I can fulfil my pledges, retain a working spares machine lacking only the spool arms (has anyone got some?) plus my new blue one.

Still a lot left to do. Have to go back now to Patrick’s first machine to see if the flywheel will come off and see if the belt does need replacing. I then have to move on to his second machine, which is a later model, after the name-change to Beam Echo, with a different valve layout. I assume my blue one is like this too, and of course that has to be checked over.

I have now got two sets of Danson Instructions, which I am cleaning up for your edification.

29th January

I just acquired this BTH 301 mainly because it has not only the transformer and leads but also a blimp! I didn't even know there was a blimp!

28th January

I bought some of this stuff. The claims it makes are amazing. However, don't get too excited. By the time it reached me, 380ml cost 50 Euros.

I go it from www.wittner-cinetec.com, a site well worth looking at in its own right. Wittner seem good, which tempers somewhat my natural

scepticism about the claims for Vitafilm.

Here's a partial wiring diagram for the Pax. If Paul - or indeed anyone! - can correct it, I will make a fair copy.

23rd January

Typically for someone with a butterfly mind like what I've got, I have flitted away onto the Pax I recently acquired. It is showing its age and has

turned out to need far more work than at first sight. There are all sorts of problems. It has a little sticker saying 220v on the front panel, but I would

expect 110v and, indeed, Terry Vacani, who has loads, tells me he's never seen one this early (JP4 amp, as used in some later Voxes )that's 220v. So

either the label lies, or someone has done a very clever conversion, or this is the one that got away. Paul Schimmel is patiently advising me by email

in how to fix the amp up and, vitally, how to figure out if it's really 220v, which is not at all obvious.

Anyway, here are some pix for you.

You can see the state it's in. Fortunately, it's a French model, which means the main drive pulley, which carries the shutter, is steel rather than Mazac.

You will note that between pix 2 and 3 I have removed the motor. This is because it was in rubber mountings and the rubber has turned into a horrible

mess of semi-liquid gunk (which has obviously flowed out onto the base in part) and nasty, brittle remnants with no flexibility left. Yeeeeuuk.

I now have to figure out what it should be like (it's obvious someone has fiddled before) and find a way of duplicating it.

Pic 5 shows one of the other main detractions of the Pax. I've always found it a noisy machine (it's a brush motor, not induction), and from what I've seen here,

most of the noise comes from the speed control brushes. These fit into the three tubes in an insulated strip that you can see at the back of the lamphouse.

The brush springs are held in place by pushing the ends of the connecting wires thru small holes in the both sides of each tube and bending the end

over. Extremely primitive. The brushes bear on 3 concentric brass rings on the back of the motor fan, and the noise this makes seems to be a significant part

of the overall noise level. Memories of my first Pax say there is no adjustment of the springs that control the make and break contacts of the governor,

but this one does seem adjustable.

You can see that, over large areas, the paint finish has faded quite badly. I have found before that the use of white spirit actually makes this even worse,

giving the paint an opaque white bloom. However, I have experimented with the bit under the lamphouse by cleaning with white spirit and then giving

it a coat of Humbrol Satin 135 varnish. You can see the result in pic 4 on the flat platform. This seems a little encouraging, tho' time will tell. It is also

obvious that I need to do extensive touching-up. I did this once by mixing up a reasonably similar colour of Humbrol and giving the entire machine a thin

coat, by hand, using a small, stiff paintbrush, so as to make it all one colour. Working a thin coat in thoroughly avoids destroying the textured finish. I have

sent an email to Precision Paints, who provide authentic colour paints to (mainly) railway modellers in the hope they can help. But if anyone has found a

close colour match, I'd like to hear. You know, of course, that Vauxhall Brazil Brown is a virtually exact match for the paint on a 17.5 Home Talkie (thanks

to Ian Green, who put me onto this one).

Lot's more to do, obviously; I will keep you posted.

17th January

Improving Light Output from a Baby *

There have been quite a few expedients adopted to try to improve light output from the Pathé Baby projector. Better lamp, improved condenser lens,

and improved projection lens were the simple ones. Then came the extra bright lamphouse, with an altogether more powerful lamp and a much

bigger condenser. There was even a water-jacketed version of this. One problem with all this is that, so far, no written instructions have come

to hand, so the following may be subject to correction.

First we see the basic enlarged lamphouse. It just fits in place of the original lamphouse back cover, the extra weight being supported by a highly

sophisticated bit of spring with a fitment on it to go over the knurled knob that secures the lamphouse top.

Next is the water-cooled version, which is in two parts. The condenser is in the section with the water connectors showing; it seems to be this

that is cooled rather than the lamp in the back section. Nor does it appear that the water flowed thru; it just sat there, so far as we can tell.

There is no visible means of support here; there appears to have been a version with a sort of platform which fitted to the projector to act as a

support, shown in the catalogue illustration. These three are all from the existing Richardson Collection page on this site.

The last picture here is from the site www.fondation-jeromeseydoux-pathe.com. I was just going to put a link, but the link to the page with this pic

was so long it seemed daft. There are plenty more pix to see on the site. But just look at that resistance!

The problem with these, however, was that there was the obvious risk of burning the film when the mech stopped for a notch. The solution to

this was found  in the shape of an attachment that automatically dimmed the light at each notch. The best image of this we (ie David Richardson,

who keeps finding these fascinating catalogue entries) have is quite poor, but for what it's worth, here it is, although it does at least tell us the

lamp is 8v 3 amp. With imagination, one can also see the resistance is like the one in the Jérôme Séydoux pic above. The only logical

solution to how this might be done had to involve the notching mechanism itself. Just in order to prove it could be done, I made a quick lash-up

from odd bits. This actually cuts the circuit when the film is running; it would probably need to be the other way round in practice (ie make rather

than break the circuit), but I had this little contact unit..... But you can imagine a circuit where breaking it at this point would force the power

supply thru a dropper resistance and so achieve the desired effect. Incidentally, a pic 2m across with an audience of 100 is claimed.

If watts = volts x amps, this is still only 24w!

And let's not forget the Lodex lamphouse, which seems to have a 50w lamp.

The device is basically a plate which takes the place of the little cover over the slider for the notching mechanism. It is held in place by the original

screw and by "wedging" up against the edge of the gate moulding. In this version, the paxolin block is free-floating, riding on the screw and held by the

folded "bracket" formed from the base plate. The paxolin block has a groove for the notching lever,  which also helps to hold it in place, and a tongue

to separate the two contact strips when the film pushes the slider out of the side of the gate. It worked quite readily, so obviously it would be possible

to control the power of the lamp like this. One might use a micro-switch, for example, instead of contacts, and maybe a relay at the transformer/resistance

end to limit the current passing thru the switch arrangement.

12th January

I have just been visiting www.wittner-cinetec.com.

This is a German site, but reasonably accessible if you use a translation thingy. They are basically high-end German stuff - Bauer spares etc, but with

all sorts of useful bits and pieces such as film cement, sprocketed mag fullcoat in 8mm, perforated 8mm splicing tape and a huge range of other stuff.

Prices are high by our standards, but when you consider the true cost of re-engineering much of the stuff they do, it's realistic.

One price i did not like was 295 euros for the CIR Super 8 tape splicer. This really is off the scale and of course the 9,5 ones, if they ever become available

again, will be even more. I suspect most of the fault here lies with Dr Leo Cattozo rather than Wittner. A little while ago I got a bit irate about this and

devised a cheapo 9.5 tape splicer that nearly anyone could make at low cost. Here are some details.

I’ve been checking and repairing 9.5 films again. Some of you may recall the dicky fit I threw the last time I was doing this; I wrote about it in the

Group 9.5 magazine. As before, I am appalled by the careless, even reckless damage I see. Because there will NEVER be any more 9.5 films on

anything but the tiniest scale. So if we don’t protect what we’ve got………...

This is why I am such a fervent advocate of tape for 9.5 in particular. Cement has its place, but the problem with cement is that you can only join,

you cannot repair. Unless of course you use sprocket patches; my advice is:- DON’T!. They are the invention of the Devil and it is rare for me to

see a sprocket patch that is any good; usually they have involved spreading cement all around the patch, thus ruining the picture instead of saving it.

What’s the point? I’d rather cut. Many sprocket patches that I see have dried out anyway (as have many splices) and are ready to fall off. On the

other hand, I have experience of tape patches lasting for 40 years without causing a problem. So I use tape extensively, and have found many ways

of making runnable a film that would otherwise have to be heavily cut about or even dumped. I don’t claim tape will do everything by any means,

and it is far from an ideal solution, but it is a valuable tool in the armoury of the 9.5 collector. The problem is, Dr. Leo Catozzo now wants huge

sums for his CIR tape splicers, when he can be bothered to make a batch. The last price I paid was £180 and I believe they are much more

expensive now. I decided, therefore, to see if I could make an economy tape splicer, but using only readily available materials and tools, so that

anyone can do it. You definitely need a file of a decent size, and a set of "rat-tail" files, cheap as chips and readily available on market stalls etc.

The other really useful thing would be a drill in a stand, but it may be possible to manage even without that (but remember when drilling in metal

it must be held tight in a vice for safety and that a spot of oil helps a lot). Other than that, just drills, screwdrivers, nuts and bolts, which the

average householder will already have, or stuff that can be gotten from a DIY store.

The big problem with using tape is punching the sprocket holes out afterwards. It is also helpful to have a means of aligning the film and

getting the sprocket spacing right when making splices, tho’ this is less necessary for repair. Anything else, you can wing it. Now, making

round holes is easy; making rectangular holes, certainly to the degree of accuracy we require, is much harder. I decided to start with a basic

9.5 splicer of a design which gave me an easy way to get my rectangular hole. I found that the splicer shown in the pictures has locating pins

that are held in place by a large blob of solder. It takes time to melt, but eventually you can push the centre pin out, giving you a nice

rectangular hole. A bit of cleaning up and judicious enlarging with the tip of a rat’s tail file and we have a hole of our target size, which

is 1mm x 2.4mm. It is important to leave in place the other pins, and the flaps that hold down the film.

The other vital component is a punch, again of about our target size (final size is trial and error by fitting it into the hole). I made this

from a strip of steel about 3mm thick and 12mm wide – the only slightly unusual material I used but which many DIY stores now stock. Here

are two views, taken before final filing to finished size. As you can see, I filed from one side only to get to the required thickness, because

it was easier and probably more accurate. Final fitting involved shaving a bit off very carefully and trying it in the hole repeatedly.

In order to use the splicer effectively, it needs to be fixed down to some sort of board, with provision for holding a roll of tape. Shown above

is a tape holder I made earlier, from Meccano™. I used nylon rod here, but a bit of broom handle, padded out if necessary with card, will suffice.

Incidentally, it is vital to use tape that is completely clear; the CIR splicers used at least to come with a roll of what looked like sellotape

and was very cloudy in appearance.

However, fixing the splicer down is tricky as it has no mounting holes. It does, however, have a hole each end. I used a standard DIY

angle bracket, cut to size and drilled to take a nut and bolt at the same height as the hole in the end of the splicer. A further nut against

the end of the splicer can be tightened to hold it firmly. What you can’t see is that I fixed a support under the central hole (with cutaways

for the bits of tape punched out to escape) to avoid any risk of bending the bed of the splicer with repeated use.

The rest really is about mounting the punch to an arm. I used a spool arm from a Eumig P8 that had already made the supreme sacrifice by

donating its transformer for a 9.5 lighting conversion, plus some lumps of wood and more angle brackets.

I found two problems here. First, the arm may be too short or the wrong height or both, and so the punch doesn’t enter the hole cleanly,

because it is at an angle, travelling along an arc of a circle. The second thing is that it’s tricky to align the arm accurately enough and firmly

enough. This could no doubt be done, but not without a lot more work. As long as you get a pretty close fit, there is sufficient flex in the

arm mounting that you can push and pull to align the punch each time you use it without much problem. The materials used here include a

threaded knob I got from Chronos, an unnecessary embellishment probably. I reckon it would be quite satisfactory simply to fit the punch

into some sort of holder and just use it in the hand. Why don’t you give it a go? I have deliberately kept all this as simple as I can, but there

are obviously all sorts of improvements that might be made. It’s up to you!

You can see lots of stuff about tape repairs in Care and Repair (if you go to the foot of that page, there is a link to a second page). Below

are a few notes that may help if you have no experience of tape splicing. These cover many of the problems with sprocket holes that are

encountered on 9.5, particularly where pairs of sprocket holes have one edge weakened, leaving a "chad" or sliver of film that can fall out

on projection. Where the chad is still in place, tape reinforcement makes a strong repair and avoids repeated splicing and cutting. This is

even more important with sound films, of course.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Cut the film – I use ordinary scissors – leaving more than half of the sprocket hole on each half of the join. This gives a noticeable overlap,

which I think is essential. I don’t think it is realistically possible to make successful butt joints, especially on shrunken and dried film. The film

near the core of a cassette, or even the small cores on some reels, is so twisted it is quite impossible. To quote from the Kodak Book of

Film Care "A butt tape splice is considered somewhat superior to an overlap tape joint only [my emphasis] because it is less noticeable (and

possibly less noisy) on screen." The Book regards overlap splices as nothing unusual and in my experience they are at least as good as, and no

more noticeable than, cement splices.

2. Apply the tape. I mount the tape in front of the splicer and pull tape off its reel using a small-size jeweller’s screwdriver under it. This

enables me to position the end of the tape at the far edge of the film, leaving no overhang. The screwdriver does not appear to leave a

permanent mark (fingers would). The tape is then pressed down and is cut, using a single-sided razor blade or craft knife, along the

surface of the splicer, as straight as possible. In time, you will wear a nice groove to follow. I guesstimate where the cut needs to be

to give a full wrap-round. (I don’t like the way the CIR splicer leaves an edge gap on one side, as tho’ for a non-existent mag track.)

3. Remove the film from the bed and wrap the tape round, ensuring a close fit to the edge of the film. Trim any excess with a blade or

knife; I find it best to keep one especially for this, as cutting on the bed of the splicer does blunt the blade. Increasingly often, I now just use

the scissors again – with care, the excess can be trimmed without cutting the film.

4. Replace the film in the splicer, close all the film holders and punch. You may have noted that the CIR splicer has a long strip beneath the

arm with the cutter and punch; this stops the film lifting up as the punch is raised. In this splicer, the centre film holder performs that

task, as the punch passes thru it. I have left the punch completely square, but one could experiment with a slant across the width or

even a V-shape of the CIR type.

5. When making joins, any shrinkage of the film is naturally taken up in the join. When making repairs, however, the sprocket holes in

shrunken film can be damaged if they have to be forced to fit over both pins on the splicer bed. With my CIR splicer, I have removed two

of the four pins to avoid causing damage in this way. With this economy model, it may sometimes be preferable to use only one of the pins

and not close the film holder over the other. Where we are dealing with intact film, there is no alignment problem.

6. I usually apply the tape with one edge following the edge of a sprocket hole (usually one edge is damaged and not the other). The rest

of the tape then more than covers the next sprocket hole. In this way, two sprockets can be reinforced at the same time, minimising on-screen

visibility as one edge of the tape is masked off in the gate. This can be done working to the left or the right. I try to avoid taping over actual

gaps where the sprocket hole has been enlarged, especially if there are several in a row. It looks horrid on the screen and ordinary tape is not

designed for this. I sometimes overlap the tape over the offending hole from both sides to give a double layer of tape in an emergency (eg a

nearly-vanished notched title).

7. This technique can be applied to sound films so as to cover only the picture and not the soundtrack, which seems to me sensible. What I

do is draw out enough tape to cover the picture and lay it on the film (sound track away from me). I then cut the film, as in 2 above, but

at a different place, in the hope of missing the soundtrack again when the tape is wrapped round.

8. The other main repair technique I use does not involve the punch. Edge tears can be covered by a short strip of tape wrapped round the

edge. The splicer isn’t strictly necessary but provides a helpful base to work on.

9. If a cement splice is dried out and coming apart, it can be sufficient to just tape over it as tho’ making a tape splice. This avoids cutting

out any film. Sometimes it is enough to insinuate a bit of extra cement, with the help of capillary action, but if there is damage, eg

cracking along a line where the scraper has cut in too deeply, the tape can avoid a cut.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

8th January 2011

It's bin a boring time on the cine front wot with visitors, trips away, a garage workshop cold enuff to freeze an Eskimo igloo and general disinclination,

no doubt due to gross culinary excesses. Done a bit of 17.5 checking - God that stuff can be filthy. Also checked 3 reels of 28mm, tho' why is less than

clear as none of them are mine. Pete G came over and we watched Metrollopis on 9.5, a really good print, too.

I have also had to deal with a severe attack of oldprojectoritis. One film I showed Pete was about the Great Eastern (Leviathan). Brunel has long

been one of my heroes, and his Dad was no slouch either, having virtually invented industrial mechanisation with his machinery to make wooden

pulley blocks for sailing ships. The film is obviously 60's, on Standard 8, and quite a scratched copy, but I've never come across another on any

format. Does anyone know anything? I showed it on a Eumig Mark S Std 8-only machine. I use this every few years, but it always needs a fair

bit of warming up, oiling etc before it's usable. The film is also 600', which is a squeeze on a 400' machine. I shall have to take Pete's advice,

and find a derelict machine so as to steal the (longer) front arm to replace the back arm of this machine.

When I was getting a projector ready for the 9.5 part of the show, I first tried my Specto 750 wot I converted to 9.5, but it has a 50mm lens and gives a minute pic. The problem here is that the 750 has this slightly bigger lens barrel - the standard Specto lens is 1" or 25.4mm in diameter, the 750 needs one 27.5mm

diameter. This is too small to take obvious replacements like a sleeved-up B&H old series lens, cos there's just not enough thickness for a sleeve - B&H

are 1" diameter like the standard Specto. I made a sleeve to fit the 750, wiv spiral grooves an' all, but I ent found a lens to suit. Any suggestions? I

remember this problem from years ago, when Chris Bird had a 9.5 750, even tho' they are not supposed to have been made. I had a hell of a job then

finding something that would do the job for him. Incidentally, the old Specto lenses can be pretty poor. I get a much sharper and brighter pic from

an 8mm zoom lens, but it has no grooves for focussing, which you therefore have to do by pulling it to and fro. This also pulls the zoom thingy, so it's

a bit of an art to ever get a film focussed and at the right size at the same time.

Anyway, I had to put the 750 to one side and try my 500. As soon as I turned it on, the lamp (an original 500w pre-focus) blew and blew the fuse as well.

I got the lamp out OK but could I get another in? I had to take off the side, and the side of the inner lamphouse, and have a go at the slots in the

lampholder for the lamp fins, which seemed to be far too tight, and then lever the lamp base in. I think the lampholder is one of the few poor features

of the Specto design. Anyway, the lamp sorted, the Specto then ran faultlessly for 5 reels of Metropolis and then a further 1000'. This was a compilation

reel, with the Pathescope Catalogue film introducing a range of silent material, but in this case padded out with additional footage from some of the

films, supplementing the fairly short extracts in the original Pathé version. It ends up with most of Billy the Ford Buster, and the last 100' or so ended

up wrapped around the spool spindle and/or on the floor. It was entirely my own fault - I had watched the film, not the projector, and I have always

known this film was too long - it almost overflows even its 1000' spool, which is virtually asking for trouble. I spose I shall have to trim something now.

With Pete's help, and many cries of "left hand down a bit" and "No, twist it the other way, you *****", we got it back on the spool.

16th December

Bonjour Messieurs (les Anglais peuvent s'en aller quelques instants). Je viens d'ajouter à la page Langue Française détails de mes films 17.5 Français,

et aussi les projecteurs. S'il y on a là bas qui s'y intéresse, écrivez-moi. Je cherche en particulier du documents, catalogues, instructions etc sur 17.5 en France,

par exemple les instructions pour le Super Rural  et le Type 42 en 16, ou copies du journal "Cinéma partout et pour tous ". Les scans à l'ordinateur

suffiront car c'est l'information plus que les documents eux-mêmes qui m'intéressent. Je voudrais aussi les films muets.

David Richardson has sent me this web address, http://www.filmstips.com. I think it's run by the New Zealand cine collectors mob. It's all about

the toy end of the market, from Bingoscopes to plastic giveaway projectors etc etc. Some of it I have previously put (by permission!) on the Toy page,

but this is much more extensive. Fascinating.

15th December

During the cold weather, I have turned my mind once more to indoor activities like film checking. I have been doing some 17.5, and have been struck

once again by just how filthy the films on this gauge can be. If you got on the first pass with any other gauge what I am still getting on the third and

fourth pass, you would regard the film as filthy. ( on the other hand, I had a four reeler that was almost squeaky-clean) Hitherto, I have concentrated

on getting films repaired and projectable (I still have score of reels I've not even looked at - too readily deflected onto other things). However, a

while back I did a thorough clean of some silent film. It gave such a superb, almost luminous screen image on the screen that I am now doing more.

The difficulty with this is that it multiplies the amount of time spent per reel and cleaning stuff doesn't much agree with tape repairs or splices.

A problem I have found with most 17.5 is that it has always tended to look poor on screen,  with all sorts of blotches and marks. I now suspect that

much of this is just muck - after all, 17.5 should give really good results.

The Super Rural amp I have been looking at has given further glimpses into the world of French 17.5, which was quite unlike the British scene.

Paul Schimmel says that the configuration of the Super Rural amp suggests an output of 25 watts, sufficient for a large hall. With a standard

110v 750w pre-focus lamp, this machine would have compared well with the 16mm machines of the day. Moreover, the amp is specifically

designed for two-machine, changeover operation as, indeed, is the standard Rural Sonore amp I have just acquired. If only we had had the

Rural Sonore here, how different things could have been. It was just a simple development of the tried and tested silent machine, with a

conventional layout  rather then the weird design and film path of the Home Talkie/Natan 175. Presumably, Pathé took the view that the

English market would not be able to afford the undoubtedly more expensive Rural Sonore. One result has been damage to sprockets on a

large scale caused by unskilled users of the Home Talkie. Still, life is full of might-have-beens.

13th December

Not reported recently as garage too cold for work so little done.

Look at this email I received the other day (from Belgium).

"I would like to thank you because the information I found on your site decided me and helped me to repair an old Eumig Mark S projector coming from my father.

This machine remained (as many others I presume) for years unused until my wife asked me to review some movies from her young childhood.

I prepared all the needed stuff and we had a pleasant evening looking at old family stories but suddenly the projector stopped working.

After opening the rear cover of the machine, I discovered that the pivot of the motor was moving nearly freely in a kind of trapezoid hole.

Repairing this did not seem too complicated but it was clear that the same problem should affect the other pivot end which didn’t seem very easy to reach.

You will not be surprised to hear that I did not find anybody willing to service such a vintage machine, so I started snuffing onto the web for a solution.

Finally I went on your site and saw that dismounting the machine was pretty easy after all and the pictures provided convinced me that you faced and solved exactly

the same problem on the same model. So I did what you did; forced  the old brass bushes into new shaped pieces of PVC and remounted the all thing which is now

ready for another fifty years of pleasure.

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience and your knowledge!"

It is nice to be appreciated, just occasionally.

I have not been entirely idle. We have been pretty much free of snow here, so was able to take a trip to Paris (via Portsmouth - Le Havre) with a friend to pick

up some projector stuff. I came back with a Rural amp and a silent version of the Pax. Despite wanting to swear off eBay, I have bought a Sadar Handy (bought

to my attention by Dino Everett) and a sound Pax (bought to my attention by Terry Vacani). Am looking at the moment at the amp for the Pax and also the one for the

Super Rural, advised by Paul Schimmel who won't let me power it up until he has studied it carefully.

30th November

It has, of course, been too cold to spend much time in the workshop. I have done some more 9.5 film checking, a continually depressing job.

I have also been fiddling with my Bolex PA, which had been showing signs of ghosting. To get at the shutter to adjust it means removing the

lamphouse cover, the lamp fitting, the pulley and a. n. other assembly from the side, then removing the side cover. One can only realistically

test after pretty much completely reversing this process. Naturally, it took several attempts to get it right, a rather laborious process.

19th November

I have just been taking a fresh peek at http://cinematographes.free.fr/index.html. This is a French website, established by Eric Lange and, if my

understanding is correct, is restricted to French silent material. A click on Formats in the LH column takes you to some lovely pix of early gauges such as

15mm. Along the top are click-thru's to lists of makers, apparatus and documents that you can explore in detail. There are, for instance, copies of a

KOK catalogue and H instructions, of very high quality, although the principal focus of the site is standard rather than narrow gauge.

Finally, a weird analyser machine with a frame counter and a manual crank, a Model 173. A particular feature of this machine is the knob at the back of the motor, which is graduated in numbers that are presumably RPM. This makes it a variable, fixed speed motor, such as I have previously met only once, on a Bolex G3. One wonders why this sort of system was not used for sound machines instead of that noisy centrifugal governor arrangement. Incidentally, I have come up

with a possible reason why B&H stuck with the braking system of speed control for so long. Anyone who has used a Bolex DA or most other 9.5 notched film

projectors will have noticed how the speed of the motor changes with the load, sometimes quite a lot. There is, however, a smaller effect even during

normal running, with the motor changing speed as it and the rheostat warm up or the load changes a bit depending on the characteristics of the film. This

more minor effect might be overcome by having the motor permanently under load from the brake shoe arrangement. Not sure I am convinced, nor is it

obvious why this should be so important, but I thought I'd run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.

25th October

David Richardson has come up with some fascinating stuff on old Ensigns.

I also found this really weird little thing. It seems to be a film strip projector, not cine, with a record player.

Also these pix of the Dansonesque Movie Mite, plus another strange left hander, the Natco, both 16mm.

17th October

Don't think I've put this one in before.

12 October

What have I been doing for it to be nearly a fortnight since the last entry?

I have:-

    - finished a lamp conversion kit for an American friend's Lux, tested same and despatched

    - checked a dozen reels of 9.5 and a couple of 16

    - shown about a third of them

    - in consequence of 2 above, invented an economy 9.5 tape splicer, as it's the only way to actually patch films up.

    - discovered that my Lux lamp conversion only works if I cut about an eighth of an inch off the lamp pins. Either I used one of those low-voltage

        lighting bulbs when I first did it, instead of a proper A1 bulb, or maybe I had a much thinner lampholder. I've also found that some of the low

        voltage lampholder are now designed for the thicker pins many of the bulbs seem to have, and so won't fit proper projector lamps.

    - cleaned up a Motocamera

    - made a new spool retaining foldover thingy for a Rank Aldis (a Bauer P7 really) and

    - dismantled the spool spindle entirely to fix the extreme stiffness that had caused the above to break as someone used it to

        force the spindle round

    - been to Rickmansworth

    - tidied up various pix for this site and started going thru this page to ensure everything has been transferred to an appropriate page

    - fiddled with a Coronet camera.

This latter has some points of interest. Apart from the usual cosmetics of scuffs, dints and shrunken leatherette peeling off, it had some more difficult problems.

The mech was jammed and the winding key had been broken, probably two connected events. The former was easy to fix - I just poked a bit and something

went SPOING! and then it worked OK. Ish, as you will see. A new key could be made, I guess. The next problem was the block which included one side of

the gate, a housing for the barrel shutter and accommodated the rear of the lens. The block is made of Mazac and is distorting and cracking. A new one could

be made, I think. However, altho' now running, the mech was hesitant and sometimes stuck, especially on starting but sometimes while running. The usual WD40,

oil, cleaning up etc helped it to run smoother, but did not overcome this intermittent stiffness. As many will know, the Coronet is unusual in the narrow gauge

field in having an intermittent sprocket instead of a claw. After much gazing into the innards, I felt the stiffness coincided with the parts of the Maltese Cross mech

where the concave curve of the cross ran on the convex curve of the pin mech, ie between each movement of the intermittent sprocket. I had already begun to

suspect that the Cross was made of Paxolin/fibre, as some projector gears are. It certainly has that look and feel, and I suppose it could have distorted just a fraction,

enough to cause the problem. A new one of THOSE is not something that can realistically be made, so I have set the camera aside.

Does anyone know anything about the Coronet and its construction, or maybe have experience of a similar problem?

30th September

I thought I would just remind you of some of the things I am looking for.

    A Pax 9.5 sound projector (preferably a French one, optical sound).

    Any 17.5 equipment, films, catalogues and other literature.

    Original or good copy of  the following instructions, and magazines, catalogues etc to buy, copy or scan.   

    Pathé Vox and Super Vox Instructions

    Triplico projector Instructions (aka Peerless or Special Peerless)

    Baby projector accessories leaflets

    Instructions for any old or unusual projectors. Please do not chuck them out!

    Issues of Cinema Chez Soi (The French equivalent of Pathescope Monthly) or Le Cinéma Partout et pour tous (a mag for 17.5 users in France).

    Early Pathé or Pathescope film catalogues  and supplements in English or French.

    Issues of Baby Cine Chat, a sort of precursor to Pathescope Monthly.

Not added a lot to the site lately cos of hols, then Harpenden where I had a stall and in a minute Rickmansworth. And 'er indoors is not well. Also,

am planning a trip to La Belle France to pick up certain projectors that have mysteriously become mine and are really too big for the post.

Also been doing some tidying of website, and have much more to do. There are all sorts of issues

    -some pix won't show up on my master copy of the site as they are .BMP not .jpg. I have to find the originals and redo them.

    -some older pix are not up to the standards I now have after learning more about photo editing.

    -I keep adding new stuff like the projector index and contents list, which have to be regularly updated.

    -I have been told that the layout gives people problems. I am working these days with a widescreen computer monitor, and recent stuff can be too wide

        for those with "square" monitors. So I re-format when I do other things, and move pix away from the right of the screen, in the hope this will help.

    -things have moved on and some of my older pages have been overtaken by new additions or just look old-fashioned to me. It was interesting to note at

        Harpenden that a number of people used /viewed the site, tho' I never seem to get any communication from them.

    -I keep coming across new material or stuff I haven't yet added. As you can see, I welcome input from other people, especially those with some

        specialised knowledge that they are prepared to share.

22nd August

I know a guy who has a Cineola for sale. See pix. Can put you in touch if interested.

19th August

Have found out an odd thing about a Bolex M8R. There is a capacitor in the base, part of the motor circuitry. Don't really understand what it does,

but the motor started surging to and fro in speed and tripping the power supply. Replaced the cap  (which was labelled Hunts, apparently a notoriously

unreliable brand) and the motor was fine.

A friend has a Graflex 16mm sound with a motor that is also behaving badly. I seem to recall this was one of a number of look-alike machines sold

under various brand names such as Singer, Rank Aldis etc, tho' I may be wrong. Anyway, the motor runs, but only slowly and with no power, and it, too

trips the mains. The best guess so far is that the main winding has gone and it's turning over just on the capacitor circuit. Has anyone got a motor or a

non-working or incomplete (apart from the motor, of course) machine for spares that could be cannibalised?

13th August

Mikael Barnard has been busy. First, he found me some old ebay pix of a Pathescope "H" with an add-on sound unit, a

thing of which I was not previously aware. After he first mentioned it, I did find a passing reference in an advert

(see 27th July entry below).

Then he found me an article by the late Alan Lott about Mazac. I have no publication reference, but assume it was ACE from the date of Nov 04 on

the copy I have. In it, Alan likens our Mazac problems to those of model railway collectors, quoting a piece by Michael Foster in "Hornby Dublo Trains", one

of the New Cavendish Hornby Companion series published some years ago. Basically, it seems to be all down to quality control. The basic mix is around 4%

Aluminium, 0.04% Magnesium,, 1% Copper and the rest is Zinc. There are two factors which cause the problem: the Zinc must be of high purity, (99.9%)

and any contamination of the mix must be avoided. From another source, Alan reported that "modern" standards (basically after WWII ) call for 99.99% pure

zinc, with limits of 0.075% on Selenium, 0.0003% on lead, 0.0003% on Cadmium and 0.001% on Tin. These are fantastically tight limits, and it is easy to see how

pre-war manufacture of toys and similar products might not have adhered rigorously to anything like such standards. Basically, if the mix was bad or

contaminated, sooner or later the item will self-destruct, and nothing can be done to stop it. On the other hand, if all was well, there is no reason to

expect any problem. We see this with Pathé Baby shutters - those on the earliest examples are usually fine.

Although Baby shutters are perhaps the best-known example of Mazac failure in our hobby, there are a number of others. The rewind handle for the old

KOK seems to have 100% mortality, the Lux suffers in terms of both its gate (early models) and motor end caps. The latter problem also afflicts motors on

the Vox/Super Vox and the silent 17.5 Rural. I have recently come across the problem in a Specto casting. New motor end caps can be made, but it's a tricky job

unless you're really good at lathe work, especially with the Vox, where gears are mounted integrally with the cap.

30th July

Another illusion shattered. I got from Bob Andrews the other day a broken "shoe" that is the heart of the Siemens so-called Beta mechanism. Beater is the more usual term,

I thought. Anyway, there was me thinking it was a triumph of German engineering 'cos no claw to damage film, but what do I find? A claw, that's what. I don't see how

you can call a thing with metal pins that go into the perforations anything but a claw; alright, it's a variant, but it's still a claw. And how does it achieve the boasted

projection of damaged film? If the perf is missing or enlarged, the shoe will surely slide over the film and maybe cause damage. Here are the pix to show what I mean;

a real 9.5/16 dual one (busted) and a pic from a contemporary ad. I shall send a copy of this to the guru of all things Siemens, Ron Ashton, to see if he can come up

with a defence.

Dino Everett has provided what he thinks may show the last gasp of 9.5 in the US - looks like a fire sale. A sound-on-disc for $39.50! He reckons it dates to 1936 or 1937.

22nd July

Came across an interesting reference, in the same ACW for Dec 37, I think. It points out that, for a 200B using a blanking plate, a simple way to ensure the lamp

is switched off during rewinding is to get a spare blanking plate and remove the centre pin, covering up with insulating tape. I never thought of that. Perhaps

one could go further and make a new blanking plate substitute which would have a switch in it to connect or disconnect the lamp circuit...........

1st June

Been looking at http://users.telenet.be/frank.ttt/, which has pix of things I never knew of, eg a 16mm Noris like the 9.5 and 8mm ones, what looks like an American

version of an H, very early Heurtier tri-gauge and a Bolex G3 rip-off. Loads of stuff also on phonographs, old radio's, film gauges etc. It's in Dutch, but I don't speak it

and still found all them pix fascinating.

30th June

------------------------------------------------

20th June

Another old catlog from Dave Richardson. I doubt this one will surface soon - doing what you see here took hours.

7th June

Does anyone know if there is any difference between the 12v lamps sold for low-voltage lighting and the ones sold as Class A1 projection lamps? I suspect there could be differences in light output, life and filament position, but have no evidence or info.

2nd May

How can I not have looked at this site before? Lots of amazing stuff for the real techie on film, stocks, colour, Kinemacolor and other colour systems etc etc. Visit.

www.brianpritchard.com/Kinemacolor%20Project.htm

19th March

I recently worked on a 200B, recently acquired by its owner, that had gradually slowed down and ultimately ceased running almost completely. To cut a long story short, although the owner had oiled it, he had taken on board the injunctions one always sees in instructions not to over-oil. Unfortunately, he didn't have the instructions anyway, so had also missed some of the more carefully-hidden oiling holes beneath the lens and under the rear mech cover. Quite apart from the lack of instructions, a common problem with old projectors, this incident made me realise that you can't rely on "oil little and NOT often" guidance with a machine that's 50-plus years old and may not have been run at all in the last 20 years. What this machine needed was a good dosing with oil to ensure it reached all old, dried-out bearings etc - especially those on motors, where there is often a felt "wick" arrangement that has to be "re-filled" before any oil actually reaches the bearing. Then a good clean-up, after which one can revert to the standard advice and oil more sparingly. The machine then ran normally.

10th January 2010

Wot, you ask, hav he bin doin' all thru Xmas and well into New Year wiv no postings?

Well, partly it's been visitors - daughters, friends - and visiting - neighbours, friends. And partly it's been far too cold in my beloved workshop during this cold snap. And partly the excesses of Xmas and the darkness of the weather hav left me somnolent.

One thing that actually took up a great deal of time was this, but at least it was something I could do largely inside, with just occasional forays into the garage. The back-story is that, some years ago, when I got back into 17.5 and 28mm, I identified the need for at least "fake" leader from 35mm, ie just a strip of film with no holes, to use on the front end of films where it would never need to go thru the projector, and saving the very limited supplies of real leader for where they were really needed. It was then I constructed the inner core of this device, the silvery drum buried in the middle. This drum is aluminium, with very narrow slots for cutters, so placed as to give 28mm wide with one blade and 17.5mm with two. Originally, I was using razor blades, then later I graduated to the circular blades you get in rotary cutters found in craft etc shops. Unfortunately, the original did not give very good results, the cut edges being very wavy and the width therefore a bit inconsistent. So I adopted a much lower-tech approach, and got some strips of steel cut to 28mm and 17.5 mm wide, then used a Stanley knife to cut. This was moderately successful.

However, I now have a need for something much more accurate. I have in recent times acquired quite a bit of 17.5 silent film, double-perf, and want to show it on the correct machine at something like the correct speed. I have zilch leader, however, of the double-perf persuasion. A year or two back, I acquired much of the 17.5 film and projector collection of John Cunningham, via another collector who had regretfully decided he couldn't keep it. Among this was a film perforator, John being a brilliant engineer. This, however, will only perforate one side at a time. It is also set for 17.25mm, on the assumption that 17.5 would have shrunk with time and the perforator really being meant to re-perforate film with chewed sprocket holes.

Clear so far?

So I decided to have another go at my first attempt, having concluded that the problem was the inherent jerkiness of hand operation and a lack of sufficient guides. Among many things I have acquired over the years is quite a bit of Meccano that is not good enough for my main model-making stock, but is fine for this sort of project. There is also the advantage that using Meccano in such poor condition means you escape the notice of the Meccano thought police who get very snippy about using non-Meccano parts. So I added chain drive for the cutters and the cutter drum, and various guides and braces and, after innumerable false starts, dismantlings and rebuildings arrived at the mech you see above. It does however, have two problems. First, it is an uncompromising engineering piece, with no thought for ease of setting up and using - it's a bugger to thread - and second, it doesn't actually work. The effort required to drive the cutters thru the film is quite high and I think it would probably need a much more robust mech to do the job. There may also be design flaws - after all, I just made it up as I went along. Still, I enjoyed the doing, even if it has proved fruitless. So I have retired to lick my wounds and ponder.

Another thing I have been doing is some adjustments to my second silent 17.5 Rural, once re-bodied as described on 24th December last. When I tested it, it wouldn't keep the bottom loop. This seemed likely to be due to the fact that the lower sprocket retaining thingy was not sprung, relying simply on gravity. I couldn't see any simple way of adding a spring, but then I recalled that, when we had a conservatory built a year or two back, I had noticed lots of the lead flashing they used where the roof joined the house just lying about loose. I thought that as I was paying, I would keep a bit of this as you never know when it might come in useful. And so it has. I added three strips of lead (one is inside out of sight) held in place by one of those little devices where a screw fits into a threaded boss, with a countersunk head on both sides of the equation. This seems to have worked, tho' it will need a bit more testing to be certain.

The other problem was that I was getting a substantial halo of surplus light on the screen all round the picture. I have fitted a 15v 150w dichroic to this machine, rather than using the original Vox lamp. The other machine, with the original lamp, doesn't seem to have the same problem. I don't know if the light is too bright, too unfocussed (I had to mount the dichroic pretty close to the gate), or if it is an artefact of a non-bloomed lens. Anyway, I thought of something that had puzzled me in one of the illustrations from a pre-war Alef catalogue (see Alef Mask). I thought, aha! Maybe this fitment is to block halos, so I made a thingy for the Rural. Unfortunately, it don't work - not having a lot of luck at the moment. I tried a bit of black card to reduce the size of the hole, but could not get a clean edge. I suspect this may be because my mask is before the point at which the light rays from the lens cross over - certainly, the bit of card had to go well into the hole before it was even noticeable. At least, that's a theory which I shall have to test. Anybody got a better idea?

24th December

I have been working away in my very cold garage on my second silent 17.5 Rural. You may recall (see 16th April entry below) that I was having problems finding a lens that would work. So far I have failed, but I was suddenly struck by what I can only describe as a brilliant idea, tho' I do say it myself. I have a couple of sound Rural-converted-to-16mm machines, pretty battered about. So I stripped down the mech of one of them, everything except the horizontal shaft which carries the cam and, crucially, the  larger lens barrel that meant I couldn't use the lens in my silent mech. Then I put the silent mech parts in and Voilà! - I have a working silent Rural, with a lens, tho' it's a bit larger than the original. And I achieved all of this without making any permanent change to either machine. Cool, huh?

21st December

I have not been inactive, tho' it's a bit too cold in my garage right now for my liking. I have assisted a junior nerd to fit a tranny and 12v 10w lamp to a Baby, and fettled a motor to fit it. I have corrected two problems on  Bolex DA so it now works; I am wondering about a) conversion to QI and b) fitting motor and lamp switches. I have checked and repaired some more 17.5 - a depressing occupation. I looked at Oliver Twist, 8r sound, on 4 x 1000' reels. Reels 1-3 sprockets almost totally intact (rare enough in itself). Reel 4 - water damage all the way thru, with frequent and regular quite small patches where the emulsion is dried out and scratchy or stripped off altogether. Looks like water fell onto the reel at one point and soaked in. Naturally, the worst affected is the sound track. Repaired a "test" film and ran it a) on Super Rural No. 1 and B) a Gebescope Model A converted to 17.5 by the late John Cunningham. He was a brilliant engineer and the Gebescope gives splendid results. Looked at a 16mm copy of Charlie the Burglar, which has nearly as much sprocket damage as a 9.5 or 17.5 film. I spose it mite just go thru a twin claw silent machine.