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1st December

Found these as I was rummaging thru my computer files.

     Unfortunately, it seems that the present whereabouts of this historic copy of Napoleon are not known, even to Kevin Brownlow. It is sad, because I finally have the proper machine to show 17.5 silent, in the shape of an original Rural. My fear is it will get shown on a Home Talkie and damaged. I am just examining my copy of Betty's Good Fortune on 17.5 silent (the original title was Cinders). Almost every single sprocket hole down one side of Reels 1 & 2 is trashed, and there are numerous splices where material has obviously been lost. Even the other side has not escaped entirely, as someone has run it thru a Home Talkie reversed, projecting presumably via a mirror or prism  Ironically, this probably makes the film unsuitable for a Rural, which only has one claw pin each side. What I really need is is a Rural Sonore, which would have a double claw on one side only and it would be possible to fit a slightly smaller motor pulley to reduce the speed to, say, 18 fps or whatever was deemed suitable. I can't change the speed on my Super Talkie; the only other option is the Home Talkie which caused the problem in the first place. That is not to say using a Home Talkie is impossible; I ran Christus successfully despite considerable sprocket damage, tho' nothing like as extensive as Cinders (I did run it in reverse with a mirror as the sprockets on that side seemed slightly better). The trick is to repair the film using tape so that it is completely free from un-repaired damage, and then watch it like a hawk thru the projector, especially that crucial top loop.

To return to Napoleon, it would be nice to know where it was, at least. Who knows - maybe the time has come to show it again? Tho' without the wonderful piano accompaniment of Arthur Dulay, 'twould be but a shadow of its former self. I seem to recall that the film has now been preserved on 35mm so, although some of the 17.5 material may have been used, it is no longer unique. Typical - narrow gauge film saves the day (as in Perils of Pauline on 28), then standard gauge comes along, copies it and thereafter takes all the credit. There ain't no justice.

28th November

Bin a bit like a duck recently - nothing much on the surface, but the legs going like crazy out of sight. I've added a lot more Baby film catlogs, and revamped things a bit to give the Baby equipment catlogs a home of their own. Also bin doing a bit of my huge backlog of 17.5 film checking. Busy busy!

19th November

Have added quite a few more of the pre-Pathescope Monthly film release leaflets - see Before PM...

18th November           

David Richardson has kindly scanned all sorts of useful, early literature, including the catalogue from 1923 below.  I have some difficulty with how to present such documents. Inevitably, the scanning process is imperfect; the slightest lack of flatness and "stains" appear. Try to adjust the background colour to what it might once have been before the paper faded, and you leach away some of the very wide range of colours of which the letters are composed. To show you, I have given 3 versions of pages 6&7; the original scan, a pale yellow/cream colour that I have found works well, and a rather stark black and white version. Deciding just how much work to do is difficult - it doesn't help that I quite enjoy doing it and find it quite compulsive - because it can be very time-consuming and there is just so much material. I shall have to leave most of them unprocessed for now. At least, I shall end up making a virtual archive of information that anyone can access, whereas actual copies are very rare indeed. I am very grateful to people like Dave who are willing to share their material in this way. He has also provided more of the Baby film leaflets - these, too,  are unprocessed - which I have started to add - see Before PM...

               This Baby leaflet is also from Dave.

9th November

I have started a Great Work. About 18m ago, I acquired a more or less intact 17.5mm Super Rural mech. By a huge freak of chance, I had the opportunity at Argenteuil this year to acquire a more or less original amplifier/base for it. The machine when I got it was extremely noisy, so much so that I felt unable to use it without full investigation and I took it more or less completely to bits. The challenge now, therefore, is to try to remember or figure out from first principles how it goes back together. The pic R shows the various bits. L is the base, then the motor (upper) and sound telescope (why is is so long? There isn't actually anywhere to fit an exciter nearer to the sound drum, and it may simply be that). Then the main mech unit, which takes the drive from the motor by the shaft seen below it (which is joined to the motor by a semi-flexible coupling), thru the central hole in the back plate of the mech. This in turn drives the gears on whose shafts are mounted the first two sprockets. The third (take-up) sprocket is driven from the spiral on the thin end of the drive shaft, via a shaft in the lower spool arm which has gears at each end to transmit the drive thru the necessary angles. The shutter blade can be seen in the pot; it rotates in front of the back face of the mech. Finally, on the right is the lamp cassette.

The close-up L shows the new parts I had made and the originals. You may be able to see that the two fibre/Paxolin gears have damaged teeth. Either they were the cause of the noisy running or I damaged them getting them out. They were expensive to have remade in brass. The two smaller brass bits on the right screw into the hole you see in the main mech just above them and carry one end of the main shaft in a ball race. The RH one I definitely did damage getting it out, but its replacement was not that costly. I never cease to be amazed that the ball races used in this machine are still off-the-shelf items today. R is a close-up of the main cam and claw assembly. The basic claw shuttle is identical to the one in the Home Talkie, but the claw pins are affixed at a different point.

Now here's something I would bet good money that few of you have ever seen. Quite what it's for I dunno - it's like an Acmiola/Cineola, but with a prism to project the image onto a screen. The only way I can see it scoring over the others is that (I think) it has a shutter.

6th November

Interesting session this afternoon with a Eumig Mark S. The problem being addressed was the motor mountings. In order to move to and fro to bring the drive shaft into contact with the rubber discs that take the drive, the motor has to pivot. The pivot supports seem to comprise some kind of plastic in the form of a trapezoid (if that is the correct name for a triangle wiv the top cut off) about 0.5" in most directions, with a brass bush inserted. The trapezoids fit into appropriately shaped recesses. The originals are apparently prone to disintegrate, and seemed to have done so in this case. Presumably, as Eumig went to the trouble of doing this, rather than just making holes in the supports themselves, they saw a need for insulation, so I used nylon, about 6mm thick, cut and filed to shape. Tho' it might have been springiness - the way the bits disintegrate reminds me of what happens with very old foam rubber/plastic eg as used to pack projector lamps. Here is a pic of a machine with intact thingies - look rather manky to me, also these seem quite solid. You have to remove the amp and the fan housing to get at the corresponding thingy further inside the machine.

While the thing was partly broken down, I thought I might as well give you a couple of shots of the amp.

I had to hand some brass tube with an i/d of 4mm (matching the motor pivots), which I force-fitted into a hole in the nylon. Following on from my musings about repair costs in relation to the Phillips, I wondered what people might be prepared to pay for a pair if they had this problem. I guess about £5 tops, which works out for me to a princely £2.50 per hour. So I'm unlikely to make any more.

5th November

I have now got the Phillips back into some sort of working order. I still have a long list of things to do but, as I am unlikely to use it extensively in the near future, it'll have to go on the back burner for a bit. What I still need to do includes:-

 - Replacing the big tranny, which is really doing very little work. The motor is probably a bit too big to use the Elf tranny in auto-transformer mode for the 110v, but it should be possible to fit a small tranny inside the base. Fair bit involved in fitting and re-wiring, and then of course I have to go back inside the tranny and uncouple that mains feed, and maybe fit sensible plugs so I can use it as a general power source.

- The top arm isn't right- tighten up the screw and it seizes up, then works loose as you move it- needs the correct thickness of washer, maybe.

- I ent got the solar cell fitment quite right - that black cover is fouling the flywheel. I am not clear what to do - open out the slot covering the cell, which is where I think the problem lies, use shims where the bracket is fixed or just trim off the bits that foul the flywheel.

- The motor takes its time starting, with a second or two of slow build-up to speed. Maybe capacitor is tired?

- I'm not satisfied with the volume of the sound. The change of cell is one obvious cause, so I might even have to try another, tho' I have fitted  an Elf one. It also seems to me that the exciter is a bit dim - there may be a way to crank this up. Position of the cell might be off.

- I noticed when framing the test film I used that the machine went very clattery before I reached the right place, so much so that I backed off. No idea why this is, or if it's the film rather than the projector.

- The rear gate is a very flimsy chromed affair and damp storage has caused rust. This needs to be carefully checked with a test loop to ensure it's not scratching.

I include all this partly as a memo to self (I am increasingly finding that even I use my website as a first port of call for info!) but also to show you just what may be involved in repairing/ restoring a projector. Any one of the above could take hours to sort, even if they are as I have imagined - if I'm wrong, who knows? And what have I missed? Make a note; do not complain about the cost of repairs to a projector as and when you have the need - whatever you are charged is likely to fall well short of what would be a realistic market rate. I won't do repairs for others by and large - what happens if it goes wrong? It would no doubt cost me more than I could hope to earn. Think what you would want to get as an hourly rate, and be thankful if you can find anyone to do cine repairs at all!

I was using a soldering iron with built-in temperature control. Quite by chance, I found it was the cause of a loud buzz from the amp when switched on. Yet another thing to watch out for.

3rd November

Bin a while, because of A) Ealing, B) week in Cornwall doing family history and industrial archaeology and C) a week recovering from a ghastly stomach bug which knocked me and 'er indoors sideways.

At Ealing September 2009, I picked up a LH drive Phillips intermittent sprocket 16mm machine. I have played with one of these at the PPT in Bletchley; it has the distinction of being the only machine I have yet met where threading is non-intuitive and just has to be known. This is because it has an arrangement whereby the gate is opened along with the film path by a single lever and, once threaded, closing up the lever makes the loops.

This machine has obviously had a lot done to it electrically/electronically. From the rear view, it appears that there was at one time an even bigger motor, and possibly a different lamphouse. The tranny, about the biggest and heaviest I have seen, may well have been designed to power a 110v 1200w incandescent lamp. The amp has disappeared, and in its place are most of the electrics of an Elf - tranny and amp, including the power for the 24v 250w lamp now fitted. The fixed wire emerging from the left of the external tranny is actually a mains feed (off the back of the mains input socket to the tranny) to the Elf bits. So it appears that all that huge tranny is doing is supplying 110v to the motor. Overkill, perhaps? The empty socket on the left of the big tranny may have been a separate feed to the original amp - there is a matching affair on the rear of the machine base. The LH input on the rear of the proj (now the mains feed to the Elf stuff) may have been an amp output. Trouble is, all this is speculation, as I have no documentation at all - anything would be welcome.

I don't know why it seems to be a point of pride with so many that all projectors should be as dirty and unkempt as possible, combining both under and over-oiling in a single neat package, tho' to be fair this has an oil bath, which are notoriously leaky things. It may be in the course of my extensive cleaning that the cell seen in the final pic got damaged, or it may already have been busted - hard to say. The corner with the output leads is cracked almost off, so I shall have to replace. Incidentally, the insulation of the original cable used for the mains feed from the tranny to the Elf parts was rotten and just crumbling off where it was connected, inside the tranny casing. It was an absolute b******* to get inside and work on to replace it.

7th October

I'm also processing the Talkie Instruction manual, first couple of pages at end of Talkie section.

5th October

Having a 17.5 period at the moment; been reviving my abortive scheme to make Talkie spool arms, as I now need two sets, so I spose I'll have to get on with it. In the meantime, have prettied up and completed the partial 17.5 film catalogue in Advertising etc. I have a second one, which has much new material and some curious detail differences; will do this one as well at some time.

2nd October

John Collins bought a Eumig Super at Harpenden, a 9.5 machine but which had somehow acquired a set of 8mm arms instead of 9.5. It was relatively simple to fix, as all that was required was a change of spindles - I copied those from mine (one re-badged as a Pathé Rex). Finding a way to keep the spools on was a challenge, which I ducked by slightly lengthening the spindles and cannibalising  Kid Super attachment for the slide-on retainers that are a push fit, yet rotate freely once on. However, having completed the job for John, I thought I would have a go at making a conventional spool retainer, ie the ones where the end is a pivoted strip that flips 90 degrees, with a spring providing a bit of tension to hold it in place. Fiddly, but I made one as a test that would undoubtedly work. Will try to do a pic.

I have had confirmation that the Argenteuil fair will not take place - at least, not at the usual time and location.

28th September

Harpenden yesterday, and I ended up bringing back most of what I took to try to sell. I find fairs very hard work and couldn't have managed this one without the generous assistance of Pete Giggle (soft G). Thanks, Pete.

I also brought back very few purchases. The fair was, I think, well patronised, with more tables than last year if anything. But between the famed parsimony of us ninefivers and the fact that members of the dwindling band of collectors already has pretty much all they want (or can find room or get senior management consent for), life is hard for sellers. Nonetheless, my worst fears of a collapse in the cine market were far from realised. Rumour has it I will not get my midwinter jaunt to Argenteuil in January as the French authorities have requisitioned the venue for emergency flu vaccinating or whatever. More when I hear it.

On a lighter note, here is a list of possible titles for the successor to "Lights Out and the Stars Appear", put together by me and the membership Secretary of Flickers in a not wholly serious mood. Hopefully, this will spur/shame you into doing better. All printable suggestions welcomed.

Lights on and the Nerds Appear                Calling All Nerds                The Electric Light Show                From Steam Radio to Cine

More Lives than a Cat                          A cat only has Nine Lives        Half a Life More than a Cat            9.5 Weeks

The Sprockets/Claws of Destiny/Fate                                                     Flickering into Eternity               Flickering Shadows

Armchair Cinema                               Cinema in the Front Room        Parlour Games/Pictures                Black and white and seen all over

The Black and White Picture Show       Carry on Up the Sprocket         Carry On Projectionist                Confessions of a Projectionist

Screen Behind the Curtains                    Behind the Screen                    After the Picture's Over           Pack up your projector in your old kit bag

We'll Film Again....                         Beyond the Stars, the memories        Carrying On                            To infinity and Beyond

The Memory Lingers on                  We came, we saw, we collected        We Never Closed                        Nine and a half for ever

The Collecting never stopped         Big Screen to Home Screen              Keep the Home Lights Burning        When the Lights came up/on again

Go not gently into that good night    They said it wouldn't Last            Forty Years on (and going strong)    No Ice cream at the interval

That's Home Entertainment            That was the Gauge that was        Green Gauge Summer                                Gauging   Success        

35 minus 6.5 3 =                            Preserve and Show                        The Passing Show                                The Show's the Thing

Calling All/Old Stars                            Where Are they now?                Green Gauge Summer                    Scope for Improvement/Change

This Happy Breed            The Lights are going out all over Europe        The Show must go on                    9.5 steps to heaven

All Our Yesterdays                        The Last Waltz                                 The Legion of the Lost                    The Parade Goes on

The Last of the few                        A few of the last                            Where's the last reel                        Reeling along/around

Why don't we do the show right here?     Passing Shadows                    These Old Shades                                Ni Notched Ka

Amazing Gauge                            A Many-splendoured gauge

Surely you can do better than that?  I hadn't realised how punny and derivative they were!

25th September

Chris Bird has sent pix of a rather substantial-looking "toy" 35mm machine.  It has a beater mech and only a single sprocket, ie no feed sprocket, which I suppose really keeps it from being anything more than a toy. It also had a box with a pic, which so intrigued me that I spent some time prettying it up.

24th September

Shingles, then holiday, then sorting myself out for Harpenden in a couple of days time. It'll be nice to get my life back and start doing interesting things again that I can tell you about here.  (Incidentally, I have been appalled to see just how much stuff I have accumulated which s not specifically part of my collection. I could never be a dealer tho' - far too much work to do for my taste.) I have a complete 17.5 Super Rural entirely in pieces and I'm going to have to figure out how it all goes back together. I have a number of machines in my collection that have problems of one sort or another and need TLC. I have stacks of English and French 9.5 to assess for adding permanently to my collection. And there is still the mountain of 17.5 to check, clean, repair. And two Home Talkies to complete, and a Natan 175 mech to see if I can turn into something like. And my 17.5 silent machines need some more work too......

29th August

I have got shingles, for the second time. It affects the upper left side of my head, including around, tho' not quite on or in, the eye. Last time was the same on the right. Any who have had this horrid complaint will understand my additions to this site are likely to lapse for some time.

This blurb for a Kinox is of unknown date. Of note are the poor grammar and the side-swipe at machines that have a dynamo, as well as the insistence on absolute safety. Could both of these last two be references to the KOK? As indeed could be references to enclosed gears.

26th August

There are always more sites I have not seen before - try this for a local collection of all sorts of cine stuff. www.curzon.org.uk/index.html

23rd August

I have added a copy of the famous Sound  Issue of Pathescope Monthly for April/May 1938.

16th August

Have found a very manky set of instructions for the Lutz/Omo/Luch projector. As the machines are common, here they are as somewhat tidied up. It's a tiny booklet, about 5" by 4". A wiring diagram is an unusual but very welcome

feature. I assure you I have not tampered with the content - the sometimes unfortunate mistranslations are original and genuine.

14th August

I've been adding some more to the Baby Film Catalogue section. I'm afraid the copies I have been able to borrow have been very poor, often photocopies to start with, and trying to get them halfway decent is a major effort. If anyone is able to lend or scan good originals, I would be grateful - any catalogues or supplements from the early days that are not already here, too, as well as Baby Cine Chat leaflets that came Before Pathescope Monthly.

Any good quality scans or loan copies of early or unusual literature are also welcome; you can see the sort of stuff, notably things like the Alef booklet (see 27th July below).

13th August

This is for Milinia. It's a manual I only acquired last week, so it's a bit of a rush scan; sorry re quality. I also have a much more comprehensive service manual, running to something like 60 pages or more, and another 30+ pages of a spares list. I'm happy to provide copies at cost of photocopying.

10th August

Dave Richardson found this piece about the Natan.

9th August

J C Laubie is a) generous b) well-informed, 'cos he has now sent me some patent info about the Super Rural, tho' I've not had a chance to get to it yet.

One reason is a request from a friend for a working 8mm Specto. Always ready to help, I dusted one down. As usual, it gave me a bit of a fight. As well as a new main drive belt, oiling and new rubber feet to replace manky ones, one of the front adjustable feet was locked solid. It also threw a new trick at me. I was about to road test when I spotted that the claw was running the opposite way to the sprockets, so that when they were operating normally, the claw was trying to push the film up instead of pulling it down. This had me floored for a while, but I finally figured out that as the in and out and up and down cams were on two separate shafts, they must have got out of sync. Then it was a matter of loosening one and turning the other until it was right. It reminds me of another Specto, for another friend, which had the motor running backwards. That was a matter of swapping the leads to the brushes inside the motor.

Yet another friend expressed to me recently his disappointment with the light output from a 30v 100w Specto. Being a thoroughgoing sort of a guy, he looked up the original reviews and measured the light output from his machine. It was performing as per original; shows how much more light we like nowadays. The 8mm Specto above is a 240v 500w model, but I thought the light was still disappointing. Not helped by the fact that the 1" lens I first tried was so soft and fuzzy, with a big halo round the pic. I must get 'er indoors to type up what may have been my first ever venture into this writing-about-cine field, which was also about a Specto.

David Richardson has come up with a very early - 1926 - Pathé-Baby equipment catalogue, which I have tarted up a lot.

1st August

J C Laubie kindly sent me a copy of the instructions for a Super Rural which, altho' not as good as I would normally like, is a rarity well worth including.

28th July

David Richardson has sent some more of his amazing Baby pictures.

Next a  Baby fitted with a water-cooled head, also showing the controller/transformer, giving 12,14 or 16 volt output for the lamp

The last two show the Rotor type B motor and variable resistance combined into a single unit for easy fitting to any Pathé Baby.

27th July

Not sure where this is finally going to end up, but it has all these machines, none of which have I ever seen.

25th July

Been fiddling with a B&H 606H 8mm machine. For some reason I have yet to discover, the motor is running slow and hot. Anyway, while I had it in bits, I thought you'd like to see the innards.

First pic is looking towards front of proj; top of proj is on R. Gate aperture bottom, that thingy top is the primitive speed control device. Second pic looks to rear of proj, which is upside down. The motor shaft (see pic 4) comes up thru that hole next to the pulley thing. The shaft carries a small grooved wheel, which is a friction drive against the larger one. Also evident is the still pic device, which opens a gap between the two wheels and brings the heat shutter into play.

The RH bit of pic 3 is the rear of the part in pic 2; you can see the bearing the motor shaft passes thru. The LH bit is a conventional motor cage. You can see upper R the curved slot into which fits a sliver of brake shoe material. Speed of the motor is controlled by this being forced against the face of the fan assembly on the motor shaft, ie control is by increasing or decreasing the load on the motor. I have always felt this to be poor design and a weak point of this B&H mechanism, although I suppose it doesn't matter much if you lose energy via a resistance or like this.

In the end, I failed to make the motor run fast all the time, so have shelved it as a spares machine. One other thing I did, tho', was to try a new way of wiring. The original B&H leads are rare and often decaying, so I removed the original fitting  from the projector. In its place I put a block of steel, about a 1" cube (have to chamfer the corners a bit for it to go in). I made a threaded hole in it, so I could copy the original method of holding it in place, ie a screw down thru the top of the socket. I also bored a central hole for a wire, which was connected inside the machine by ordinary soldered joins, covered with heat-shrink tubing. I put a knot in the cable inside the machine to stop it being pulled about. As I also dislike those great, clumsy trailing  leads, I cut the cable to about 6 " long and put a socket on the end, which will take any standard euro plug, like you get on kettles and computers.

Now that I have a way of by-passing the irritating B&H lead problem, I may use them more. The very short lead with a socket works for all sorts of machines, eg Elfs, whose long fixed leads are a pain.

19th July

A new contact, M. J-C Laubie, has found a superb pic with dimensions for both silent and sound 17.5. I have never seen a such thing for 17.5 and I am deeply indebted to him.

Martial Dassonville a pris peur à ma prise faible de la langue Française. Il m'a corrigé; voir Pathé Rural. Je suis très reconnaissant de son assistance; merci bien.

After prolonged and exhausting tribulations, I have finally got the Super Rural working well, at least with films in good nick.

11th July

More on the Super Rural.

First pic shows top sprocket as restored. Seems to work well, tho' have yet to try it with damaged or extensively repaired film. 2nd is the third sprocket. The restored retaining roller is L; R I have taken advantage of the alterations that had previously been done. I have re-shaped the plate that had been fixed behind the sprocket, and used it to provide a sprung smoothing roller for the take-up. I felt the need for this partly because the take-up, gear driven from the centre of the spool arm, is not quite smooth and partly because I think the use of 2000ft reels will need this.

We then have a view into the lamphouse. Originally, this whole side of the lamphouse was solid; as you can see, a large hole was hacked into it, and a crudely-fashioned lamp arrangement inserted. I have not really changed this much, other than to give the lampholder more space for adjustment as it was way out of line, and to re-arrange the wiring so it is possible to change the lampholder without having to undo the wires from the back. The final pic shows the box I fitted to the back of the motor - where there were just bare terminals when I got the machine. Originally, the feed to the exciter lamp also went thru a (much smaller!) box here. Now the feed goes via a socket on the side of the switch housing.

10th July

I've decided I'm like a duck - sailing along all serene on the surface, but the little legs going like crazy out of sight. Have now added some more detailed manual/parts list stuff for the Victor.

Pour les Français, je viens de traduire mon article en Flickers sur le 17,5 en Français. Un ami est en train de le corriger, puis je le ferais disponible d'une manière à décider.

In addition, have translated my latest 17.5 article in Flickers into French.

Have also played more with Super Rural. As reported on 2nd July, I was not satisfied with the lamp interlock arrangement. I have now sorted this, with much advice from Noel Pratt, by inserting a relay  to control the lamp current. Basically, the motor switch is actually switching the mains supply to the motor tranny; once this switch is on, the tranny is fed and in turn feeds the motor. The switch also controls a mains feed to the relay; once the switch is on, the relay allows current to go to the lamp. If the relay is not receiving current, ie the motor switch is off, then the lamp gets no current. I did do a rough diagram which I shall try to include. The relay (Maplin) is a double pole double throw, but I have wired it as SPST, wiring the pairs of contacts together, as shown, because it's a 10amp relay and 24v 250w is 10amp plus, tho' I doubt it matters at these low voltages. Pins 4 & 5 don't get used. The reason I have the lamp voltage thru the relay rather than controlling the mains input to the lamp tranny is that this is an Elf tranny and supplies the amp and exciter, too, and I wanted to be able to run the sound without the lamp.

In an attempt to deal with the distorted sound problem I hardly have to move the volume control from 0 to get sound too loud), I have added a potentiometer across the input to the amp, which I can adjust from outside via a small hole. Now working on the lamp, which I think is way out of alignment. I find along the way that the lens housing is the same size as Debrie lenses, but none of the short throw ones I have will go far enough back towards the gate to focus.

7th July

Terry Vacani has sent me this link - even if you can't do French, you should be able to find your way to some splendid pix of projectors etc. Pathé - Recherche simple 

3rd July

Just found a new (mainly 16mm) website, www.paulivester.com. Inter alia, he has attempted a list of all Bell and Howell projector models.

2nd July

Been playing about with the Super Rural again (see May 2nd) and I think have got it working well. The problem is that the Elf amp inside the casing seems to give rather low and distorted sound, while an external amp gives excellent results. I suppose I shall have to go in and sort it, but it's a lot of fiddling as the main plate to which the amp components are attached has to be cut about to fit, and because of the way everything is wired together, I can only test a replacement amp once more or less fully installed.

When I first wired the machine up several years ago, the only way I could find to achieve a motor/lamp interlock was to make the motor switch control the mains input to the entire machine. So there was no amp until the motor was running, and I didn't really like that. After discussion with a friend, I tried again, wiring one wire of both the 110v for the motor and the 24v for the lamp thru the motor switch together, before going on to the motor and the lamp switch. This gave me interlock OK, but as I am usually good about switching motor off before lamp, I didn't find the problem at once. For reasons that I confess are not clear to me, I now have a 2-way switch sort of arrangement. If I switch on either the lamp OR the motor switch, the motor starts. If I then operate the other switch (either the motor or lamp, depending on which I pushed first), the lamp comes on. Switching off is the same; either switch will turn the lamp off, and the other then turns the motor off. Apart from anything else, this removes the option of one-switch emergency off, the second main point of having an interlock (the first of course being to stop the lamp being on without motor.) I shall have to thin gain.

I've also been making changes in my garage to create a bit more room and a bit less clutter, as I keep literally falling over stuff, and having to walk sideways- seriously! Together with this ghastly hot weather, which makes any serious activity impossible, not a lot has got done lately.

17th June

I suppose as it's called a professional I'll have to put it in 35, not toys.

14th June

A leaflet for a Specto analyser with a very odd colour scheme.

12th June

My time since the last posting has been largely taken up with an "H" projector. I have added quite a bit to the previous stuff - go to "H".

28th May

I have added a copy of a Victor Animatograph instruction book.

23rd May

I have always been totally confused by B&H projector model numbers. I have found this, which helps, tho' I suspect there was a whole range of other models in the US.

17th May

This is a 7-pin DIN plug. Never used them myself - 5-pin was as far as I got. I have maybe 10 of these going begging if anyone is interested.

14th May

I'm sure I mentioned to you a while ago problems I had had with Elfs suddenly coming to a full stop, the cause being a take-up belt doing what I thought was impossible and wrapping itself around the lower pulley. I've been meaning to have a go, and I just fitted a thing that may help - it's basically just a stripper. The tricky bit was fitting it without altering the projector, always an important consideration for me. Three screws hold a bit of 4mm brass rod to a thin steel plate. The lower screw for the arm's cover goes thru the hole you see, and the two screws near the top just keep the steel plate from pivoting, because of there being only a single fixing hole - they don't go into anything, they just locate the plate by being either side of the reinforcing rib. The cover goes back on top and you can't tell there's anything there. I've no idea if it will work; I'll get around to testing it one day.

10th May

Je me suis rendu compte que je m'occupe beaucoup des formats Pathé, Français. Alors, j'ai essayé de traduire en Français une de mes pages. J'espère que les amis Français m'excuseront si je fait des erreurs, ou de langue ou de fait. Les remarques seraient bienvenues. Voir Pathé Rural.

9th May

The silent Rural has only 500' spool arms - imagine showing eg Christus - (8 x 500'). If you should ever want to do such a thing, of course. So I am stealing the spool arms from several of my 16mm Rurals Sonores to provide "Super Arms". Nothing is ever easy, naturally. Pic one shows the ravages of Mazac on one of the take-up pulleys. The enclosure on top holds the brake mechanism, shown in exploded form alongside. As you can see, the wall of the enclosure is disintegrating and the pulley is warped a little out of shape. Pic 2 is my solution. I have sliced off the remains of the enclosure and fitted a new one, which has to have a rim to secure it to the pulley (with screws from the rear). I also skimmed the pulley to make it a bit neater. (The brass thing is just to hold it while I worked on it.) Finally, the spindle itself. The original 16mm one has just had the square part removed. What I then did, tho' I might not do it quite the same again (I was making it up as I went), was to turn the collar down a bit, then make a steel disc to go over it. I made the hole slightly small, then heated it and force-fitted it with a hammer. The problem is, the hole for the pin is about on the boundary of the two bits. It does work, but there has to be a better way. In this case, the pin is part screw-threaded and screws in from the back, where the screw-head is recessed.

8th May

Been getting a lot of enquiries re Debries recently, so I've scanned in my Handbook of the D16 Debrie. See Debrie Instructions.

6th May

I have acquired a further set of Pathé Rural film listings (no pix this time) which I have started to post under Rural.

2nd May

This shows the original type of retaining roller for the hold-back sprocket on a Super Rural, together with my attempt to copy it. The lump of aluminium is a length of bar, extensively shaped and cut about, with a central bore for the long arm with the slot in it. This is needed because someone actually went to the trouble to hack off the original lugs that carried the  arm. Go figure. So I have had to try to make a new pair of lugs, and a means of fixing them to the machine. Tricky, as I have very little depth where it goes before hitting the shaft on which the sprocket itself sits. Rendered even more difficult by the fact that, in a masterpiece of design, the entire front arm assembly is one huge piece and at some angles won't fit my machinery.

The first two show how the set-up should look, and how the second one actually does look. To call this bodgery of the worst kind is hardly enough. The next two show my restoration effort once completed. The third pic shows the replacement cover I made for the horrid abortion that had replaced the original sound reader.

Pic 1 above shows the layout of the soundhead area of the machine as I received it. The three small brass rollers are an addition, fixed to a plate located in a slot cut out of the face of the projector. You should be able to see the outline of the plate. You will note also that there is no middle sprocket. The idea of this piece of lunacy was to lengthen the film path in advance of the sound reader because of the issues I have discussed elsewhere over what is the proper length of sound separation as between French and English machines.

Pic 2 shows my first attempts to deal with this and restore the machine a bit. Not only had the third sprocket been removed, but the internal gears had been discarded too! I had new gears made; fortunately, how I know not, a third sprocket had somehow survived. I made a new plate and  mounted a pair of rollers pivoted on this. As I received the machine, there was an arrangement of this type, but it had to be changed to accommodate the replaced middle sprocket. You will see the original sprocket retaining roller for the third sprocket had been removed and a plate mounted instead. To complete this little corner of madness, Pic 3 shows what was done to the top sprocket - it's supposed to be like a Debrie and is ingeniously done, but it don't work! This, too, will have to be restored. You will note the sprocket in this pic has holes in the side. All the sprockets on the other machine have a plate fixed here which is 38mm, about 2mm more in diameter than the sprocket, so forming a guide lip to help keep the film on the sprocket. I have made one from scratch, but it's hard work and not terribly satisfactory - you can see it in one of the pictures just above. For the other two, I have some repair washers of a diameter halfway between, ie 37mm or 1.5" which I will adapt.

30th April

Despite lack of reports, I have been working hard, first on my second 17.5 silent and then on trying to repair some of the ravages to my first Super Rural committed by a former owner. This is a continuation of work started before there even was a Cinerdistan! The silent machine is now a runner, with a rewound motor, a tranny (I chickened out of using the resistance and wired round it, fitting a separate lamp switch as per the first machine), and a 15v 150w dichroic mirror lamp. Mind you, I wonder if some projectors don't love me as they should - this one fought me every inch of the way. I made an improved barrel for the lens, dumping the copper tube. Then the lens stuck out the back and fouled the fan, so had to make and force fit a spacing washer  at the end of the lens tube. Then the motor turned out to have been wound to turn the wrong way for this projector. Fortunately, I do know how to fix this. Typically for me, I haven't actually run any film yet.

The motor rewind was carried out for me by N J Motor Rewinders, 1587 London Rd, Leigh-on-sea, Essex SS9 2SG. Tel 01702 473 694. The price was about £50 excluding VAT and carriage, which I regard as exceptional value for such a specialised job. The fact that the motor turned the "wrong " way was because I never realised there was a choice and failed to specify.

I have closely examined the still picture mech on both silent machines, but I cannot see how it would work, at least with the machines as I got them. The shutter/heat filter inside the lamphouse is fine, but to achieve a still, the lever needs to push the main drive pulley away from the body of the machine, presumably against a spring, and disengaging some sort of clutch, so the motor can still run. Don't know how they would have dealt with the shutter on the occasions when it got in the way. Trouble is, at the moment, operating the lever causes the main drive shaft to jam as there is no movement available.

I have also been fettling up a Super Vox, not least by fitting a spare end cap to the motor, the original having Mazac'd. This is to replace on the standard Vox (see 28th Feb), which turned out to have an unstable pic, almost certainly due to grooves worn in the sides of the gate channel. Fixing this requires some very accurate machining out and fitting of new strips to forma clean edge. I bottled out, for the moment at least.

16th April

There is good news; it seems I shall after all be able to get the motor for my Rural re-wound at respectable cost, tho' I shall now have to unpick some of what I have done - ain't it always the way?

The first of these pix shows the donor motor, with the new pulley wot I made. I have fitted two x 2mm plug/socket thingies in existing holes in the top of the motor housing. These are from Maplin and I find them useful; be ready for them to cease being stocked almost at once therefore. These take the capacitor wires (remember, the sound machines used capacitor-run motors) down thru a hole I punched in the cardboard (or "shoddy", ie old-style suitcase material) sheet that sits between the motor housing/mech and the base. The capacitor itself is in the next pic; note the sophisticated mounting using a bent strip of metal. I have fitted a tranny, but have yet to wire it up.

The remaining pix are basically workshop shots to help me should I ever decide to restore the original set-up - please note that, as (nearly) ever, I have made no permanent changes that cannot be reversed ( bar that little hole in the cardboard). I have also left myself a little file note about the wiring, 'cos I know I won't remember it tomorrow let alone years from now.

The more I work on the silent Rural, the more I am impressed by its design and suitability for purpose. As the above pix show, all the electrics are in a single module, which removes with three screws and the disconnection of two wires. These are the two you can see flapping loose - they run between one leg of the power supply, via the ammeter, to the lamp socket. The motor and lamp connections are external. The drive from the motor to the mech is external too, so belt replacement is a cinch. The base is a very solid casting, maybe even iron. This is simplicity and design at its best - if anything goes wrong, it needs little skill or time to replace a module, be it electrics, motor, lamphouse or mech. The entire thing is robust, and came in a solid wooden crate for transport. In short, ideal for lugging round small villages and odd venues. And if one accepts, as I think I must, that the lamp is indeed controlled through the resistance mat, not a tranny, we have no AC/DC worries, and tolerance of a wide range of voltage, too. I am, however, not persuaded to remove the tranny.

On top of this, the design proved readily adaptable to sound with remarkably few changes. A design classic, I think.

14th April

The hideous loft upheaval is now at an end and I can finally get back into my cinema and find stuff.

Big event of recent times is a visit to France at the invite of one of the big collector/dealers, Alain Gomet. He is a big wheel in his world and was able to get us (Pat Moules and me) into the equipment stacks at the Cinémathèque Française, for example, not normally open to the public. Needless to say, a few bits and bobs came back with us. A full report will probably have to await the summer issue of Flickers.

Been plugging away at the silent Rural. I have repainted the motor, tho' inevitably it immediately starts to acquire a new set of scratches and knocks. Then, of course, the problems started. First off, the motor in the Rurals is held in place by a single knob that screws into the side of the motor casing. The motor housing is shaped in part to match the curve of the motor and so help to hold it in place. Well. First off, the way the blower fan fits to the motor is different - the silent has a LH thread on the motor shaft and in the bore of the fan. So I had to take the fan from the donor machine as well. Then I find that in fact there is a subtle difference in the motor, which means it sits at a slight angle which, in turn, means the fan is at a slight angle, so messing up the very tight clearances and causing the fan to foul the motor housing. (it tends to make a very bell-like ringing). The only thing I could think of was to make a "shoe" to provide some support at the rear of the motor to straighten it up, using the motor thru bolt as a fixing point. See pic. Another difference is in the oil delivery system; the original was a robust piece of copper tube which would by no means work with the donor motor. The little white tube you see by the top motor fixing bolt is part of a cotton bud, which is hollow and has just enough flexibility to ease around the bolt and get oil to the right place. Even now, it's not quite right, and the fan keeps starting to ring if I don't get it set up just right. I am therefore still pursuing plan A and finding out about  a possible rewind of the original motor.

Anyway, I got to the point where I could seriously test the machine by running it. I had been concerned from the start that there seemed to be a bit of binding in the mech, which appeared to arise from the cam being too tight at some parts of its rotation and too loose elsewhere. It would run with the motor, but was stiff and sometimes wouldn't start, leaving the belt slipping. I was afraid that I might have to actually make a replacement for one of the brass surfaces the cam rides on, not a task I would relish as it requires engineering of considerable precision and I'm not sure I can do it. I took the claw/cam mech apart and removed one of the brass surfaces - it just looks like a small bit of brass angle strip. There is already a pic of the claw/cam from my other machine which shows you what I mean. I puzzled over this for a day or two, and measured up the brass angle in case I needed to make one. Then I put the machine back together and, blow me if it didn't work fine! All the stiffness gone, the only problem being I don't really know what I did to make a difference.

Another thing I have done is to make the lens tube and lens mount.

Pic one is the view from the back of the machine - the lens sits in a long tube which reaches back from the front of the projector to close to the plane of the shutter - I'm guessing this is to help protect from oil splashes. I didn't fancy buying a bar of expensive aluminium only to turn most of it into swarf (which anyway is the principal product of a home workshop) by making a huge hole thru it and cutting away the outside as well to form a lip. (Top thing in pic 3 is the lens mount and lens from the other machine). So I managed to find a bit of thick-walled alu tube; this wasn't quite big enough to make the full lip you can see on the front end of the original, so I made a ring (steel) to fit over the alu and hold it in place (pic 2). I also had to make the screws as, although they are 3mm, are not the standard thread and so cannot be bought off the shelf. The lens is 40mm from a Bolex; the rear portion of the barrel was about the right size and I bored out my tube to match it. The front portion I cut off and fixed to the front of my new lens tube - the intermediate section is a bit of old standard copper water pipe. I haven't tried the lens yet - I suspect I may have to shorten the copper tube bit, as I am not at all sure I won't get the edges cut off - the original lens is a 55mm. It is very difficult to find a lens that will do the job - the absolute maximum possible size to fit within the lens mounting tube is 30mm diameter and, of course, it needs to have a wide rear element and be able to fit down at the bottom of that tube.

The little brass bit at the bottom of pic 3 is a replacement retaining nut I had to make for the blower fan. there are lugs on the back which engage with the shaft, but because of the slight differences with the donor motor, the lugs on the original were too short for it to work quite right - not all that clear as to why.

All this work - and I bet I end up with the old motor back. And still a lot more to do before it can leave the garage and join the good, working projectors in the loft. And I still have not resolved the issue of the lamp - I am told that a slightly larger version of the familiar sort of resistance mat serves to take the lamp power supply from 110v down to 15v 200w. My first Rural I didn't even know of this and fitted a tranny; I'm still dubious and highly reluctant.

31st March

I have told you about the 17.5mm silent Rural/Rex projector I bought at Argenteuil last year, and my various trials and tribulations in setting it up and making it work and making a new claw. This year, I bought another, along with a batch of films. If you look in the advertising section, at the Rural programmes, there is a long index that I have reproduced. Among the films I acquired were at least 2 parts of Programme 91, viz, "Comment j'ai tué mon enfant", 6 reels, and "Un bon petit coeur", 2 reels. The feature is in very good shape, but the comedy short is fine in Reel 1, then reel 2 has ever-increasing "water damage", as I call it, where the emulsion is faded in patches, severely roughened in others and in some parts has been more or less completely stripped off. It becomes so frequent that I doubt the film is viewable. Oh well, could be a source of leader!

Anyway, as usual, there are problems. Inevitably, one buys largely on sight (or someone else gets it) and takes the chance. I could see it had no lens or lens barrel, but I was sure that was readily fixable. What I had not bargained for was finding the motor was dead to the world, despite looking in very good condition. This is not necessarily the end of the world; it is possible to have motors rewound, tho' very costly. Or one could remove the innards and fit a different motor within the original case. I am actually going to try out yet a third approach. I have a total of 4 Rurals Sonores, all converted to 16mm. One I have restored to working order as a 16mm machine, one is a long-term conversion-back-to- 17.5 project. The other two are in very poor condition, and would be a major project to restore even as 16mm machines. I have therefore pinched the motor out of one of them to fit to my silent machine. There are snags; obviously the sound-projector motor has a condenser, and runs at a fixed speed so as to deliver 24fps. What I have done therefore is to make a new pulley, rather smaller but not, I think, quite down to two-thirds the size of its original. Hopefully this will deliver a speed somewhere around 18fps. Virtually all the paint had peeled off this motor, so I have done a re-spray, with lots of masking off the bits that need protecting from the paint (Hammmerite satin black). Never easy, eh? I've also re-sprayed the rear cooling fan cover, after filling a couple of holes where the Mazac had split off. I will keep you posted.

1st February

Couple of pix from Flickers, just to remind you to subscribe if you don't already. Quality problems are my poor scanning; the quality of Flickers' printing is the best of any cine mag - pictures you can actually see clearly! For a further taste, I've reproduced in 28mm Story my series of articles for Flickers, tho' without all the pix as yet.

 9th November (probably)

I felt it was time I got a bit more computerised on the sketching front. I have done two versions of a drawing for a 200B lamp adapter, tho'  the computerised one didn't want to appear on site - I had to scan it in from a print! B************ format incompatibility I expect.

24th October

13th September

I was very sad on my return from holiday to hear that Peter Spooner had died after a brief spell in hospital. I had been fearing this since his health deteriorated earlier this year, although his interest in cine remained with him. I first met Peter when we were both involved in the work of the Projected Picture Trust at Bletchley Park, which was in easy travelling distance for both of us. We became friends, exchanging visits and trading projectors to and fro. He had I suppose been involved in cine almost since the introduction of 9.5 - he was born around then, anyway. He had done so much, experimenting with synchronised sound, collecting rare silents on VHS, restoring projectors - the Compleat Cine Amateur, one might say. Peter was such a nice and thoroughly decent man - words that sound strange to modern ears, perhaps - but I am sure many will know just what I mean. He helped me greatly by filming all the 28mm films that I have made available on DVD, and some 17.5, too - even tho' he had passed 80 by this time. Another pillar of our little cine community gone - I shall miss him.

15th March

Been rummaging in the ACW folder again and have added a number of extra shots to the Silent to Sound section, including a  Baby projector sound-on-disc set-up.

Obviously, cine enthusiasts were showing considerable mechanical ingenuity, and it was no doubt the same in many other hobby areas. The question is, unless you believe all this mechanical aptitude suddenly vanished from the human genome, where has all that ingenuity and effort been directed? What are the people who would otherwise have been converting cine projectors actually doing with their time now? Do they find it just as satisfying, whatever it is, or do they harbour buried, unrecognised urges to nerdery that modern life gives them no opportunity to fulfil?

Somebody actually reads this!  Paul Schimmel says "Where are the nerds is a good question; a few years back they were building PCs, but this is becoming harder. Younger ones are fitting blue LEDs to the bottom of their Corsas. I help with a youth group and something I generally notice among the youngsters is no real interest in how things work. In my teenage days I didn't have much money and scraped together a HiFi system etc repairing as I went. These days with everything made in China and very cheap the thought of opening it up and fixing it doesn't seem to occur to anyone.

It does have to be said that whilst a cine projector can often be repaired a DVD player represents a different challenge: Clean lens, oil spindle motor is about all that can be done."

I worry that this frustration of the nerdish urge may break out in some unfortunate way.

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