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April 2020

A further update. I went in for op on 2nd March. All seemed well, but complications arose and they had to do it over a week later, clean me out etc. Further complications ensued with which I shall not bore you. The result of all this is I am weak as a kitten and recovering only slowly. I came out of hospital only to go into total lockdown as I am officially in the "highly vulnerable" category; we have had to import a daughter to help as 'er indoors is also far from well and we would find it hard to cope alone yet awhile. Daughter is working from home which, thanks to all this modern technology, she can do as well from here as from her own home.
So I have not been able to pursue my normal (I want to write "avocations" but I am not sure it's right) cine-related activities for any length of time before having to take a rest. I have managed to get a bit more done on updating website, so I might as well update on that too. I have completed the greater part of the 9.5mm pages and done quite a bit on 17.5 and 28. The problem is the website is far more extensive than I remember and I keep coming across pages I had almost forgotten (eg Back from the Bodge, wot I have just done) but still need attention.

An encouraging sign of recovery is that I am starting to think again about stuff to do when I am fit enuff. I am still very interested in the HID lamps - I have told you before about my efforts with the Bolex DA. I have already had a Fumeo Super 8 machine converted to HID which, as it was originally fitted with a Marc lamp, already has a proper dowser (douser?) as standard. I am beginning to wonder if I might find room for one of the peanut type HIDs in a Super vox. They will burn in any position so one could easily angle it for doing the sound as well, tyho' I suspect some filtering down of the light level would be needed - anyone got any bright ideas how to do this? It all depends on if I can squeeze a lamp in or not. I have also converted a 17.5 Rural Sonore to a mirror HID, but this involved complicated work to extend the rather shallow lamphouse backwards. I wonder if I can fit in a peanut instead? Less light, but a lot less work.

The other thing constantly in the back of my mind is the perforator and printing equipment which has been entrusted to my care on the basis I have a dry garage/workshop and some capability of fixing (tho' not as much as I would like). This equipment came originally from Pathé and much of it was subsequently used by Novascope. It is all pretty much irreplaceable and as such needs to be carefully conserved. Particularly as regards the perforator (which does 3 rows of 9.5 perfs and 2 rows of pilot holes at the side all in one pass), some parts appear to be missing. If anyone out there knows anything about these machines or has pictures, or knows of any spares or knows someone who does, do please get in touch as I would love to restore these machines to functionality, tho' given the lack of availability of film stock and the huge cost thereof I very much doubt they could ever be used in practice. But they are an important part of the 9.5 heritage and in any other country but the UK would be taken and cherished by a museum. Fat chance. Home movies/cine seems to be regarded with contempt by the glitterati and the museum nobs; FILM is all to them.

 

February 2020

I was due to go in for this 'ere bowel cancer op on Monday of last week. I duly did all the pre-op stuff including that vile muck they give you to empty you, only to be rejected as not fit enough. This was not wholly unexpected, as I had developed a bad cold and a much worse cough over the preceding few days. A week later I am still ruff. Op is now in two weeks time.

Anyway, enuff of my woes and back to cine matters. The trip to Argenteuil was a moderate enuff success, in that I sold enuff stuff to cover the cost of going there which, as I would have gone anyway, I count as at least a draw, even a score-draw. What I did not sell were a couple of big ticket items, one of which I realise I have never told you about. This is a 1920s "Jacky" Debrie, a 35mm machine not unlike some of the cameras Debrie were producing at the time. Until the prospect of taking it to Argenteuil, I had not even taken it out, let alone fixed and tested it.

                                   

                    

Here are some pix; these are mostly stolen from the internet, but my machine is exactly the same, except I do not got the spool-box things. The only pix that are mine are the switch mech.

It's a very strange machine. The strangest bit is that the film has to cross over by 3 or 4 inches to reach the bottom sprocket. The machine was pretty seized up when I got it, and I spent many days coaxing it back to life. A particular problem was the switch mech, which I had to take apart quite a bit as it was integral with the double motor resiatance, both parts of which had cracked clean in two, fortunately without breaking the wires. I super-glued them together then used epoxy putty to reinforce the repair and keep the wires around the break area firmly in place. Figuring out how to connect it all back up again once I'd done the repair took me quite while

My machine is available to buy to anyone who can fork out £1k or suggest a sensible offer.

January 2020

As some of you will know, I have not been quite so inactive as the length of time since my last entry here would suggest. I finished chemo for lymphoma (second time around; first round 2005) in late August, then had a few weeks off away. On my return, I was scrambling about as best I could to get together stuff for the two Autumn Film Fairs. I fear that interest in cine appears still to be in decline, at least as far as the equipment side (which is my principal interest) is concerned. I was somewhat disappointed in both fairs, more so Chorleywood where there almost seemed to be more stallholders than bona fide punters. As a result, I have picked up the baton Tony Reypert used to carry and, along with Patrick Moules, taken a table at Argenteuil in 10 days time. Preparing for that has used up most of my remaining energy. I shall report back.

Apart from that, the good news was that the PET/CT scan taken 6-8 weeks after the end of chemo showed full remission, tho' the longer-term prognosis is not terribly encouraging. It also showed something in the bowel, which led to an unpleasant episode late last year when they biopsied that. Two days ago they told me I have bowel cancer, so clearly the competition for what hideous disease is actually going to do me in is hotting up. Operation next month, which is a great nuisance as it will thoroughly mess things up for me as regards the Spring fairs. The other thing that is hotting up is pressure from Senior Management to reduce my holdings as otherwise she will have to pay for a bigger grave to make room for her to chuck it all in.

 

July 2019

I have not been as inactive as the gap in time may suggest, tho' slow as chemo has slowed me a lot. I refer you to the section under 9.5 silent on Toy projectors, where you will find a piece on the Delta aka Homray projector kindly furnished to me by Peter Ryde of the Lincs Film Archive. If anyone knows what lamp this projector used and where to find one, or suggestions for another lamp that might fit, I would be grateful to hear from them. I have also done some stuff on a Celfix projector (which you can find via the projector Index) and I have been working towards converting a Pathé "S" projector to sound by cannibalising a defunct machine.

April 2019 Encore

You will recall I told you about my attempts to fit an HID lamp to a Bolex DA (See Feb 2018 below for a link). I was using the lamp with the integral mirror, which needs to have 32mm from the plane of the film to the front edge of the mirror. There is unfortunately no way this can be achieved with the DA and the results were no better than from a normal tungsten halogen lamp. So I tried the peanut-shaped equivalent of the HID lamp, which I mounted simply by putting a metal bar with a snug fit into the original lamp socket and mounting the HID lamp socket to that. Height is not too critical as there is plenty of adjustment up and down with the original holder, and centring takes care of itself. There is also some fore and aft movement from the mounting plate for the original.
 
I made quite an elaborate douser arrangement when I converted a DA for a friend, but decided to go simpler this time. Here is a pic.

Working from left to right we have the douser plate, with folded sides that wrap round the condenser lens housing and help keep the plate in place. A brass rod serves to make the step across from the position of the condenser lens to the centre line of the lamphouse. The centre of the lamphouse cap is drilled out, starting from the hole where the inner lamp sleeve was fitted. I tapped the hole in the lamphouse cap to M3, then made a brass sleeve piece with a 1.5mm bore for the activating rod and a 3mm thread to screw it into place. The plastic knob is a late addition when I found the original metal knob I fitted got too hot. It seems to work ok, tho' I am wondering if the metal plate of the douser is not a bit flimsy. Time will tell. What I can tell you is the new lamp gives a good, white light, significantly brighter than a tunsten halogen lamp.

The bad news is that both the mirror lamp and the peanut bulb may disappear from the market because of new rules - they seem to contain mercury or summat, and neither manufacture nor disposal is environmentally friendly.

I have made extensive adjustments to the DA page to avoid some awkwardness in navigation where the old structure from before the Great Software disaster clashed with the new system. I have also added at the end a piece on another quirk of the Bolex I had not previously fathomed.

 

April 2019

Not really sure I should tell you this particular tale, since it don't redound much to my credit. My cultured readers will know that I have spelt "redound" correctly and will have moved on to reflect smugly on the use of the word by, inter alia, Spenser. Still, in the interests of openness, transparency and similar buzz words, yer tiz, as we used to say in Bristle.

My loyal fans will also know that I have a particular liking for Heurtier machines, with all their interchangeable bits and some splendid valve amps. The result has been that, at present, I have two of the Universal type (a machine I lusted after almost from the moment I took up cine) no less than three mag-only Supersons, one of which has been adapted to handle optical as well as magnetic tracks, plus a couple of silent machines.

 

               

Anyway, I wanted to check out one of the Supersons with 8mm mag tracks, so reached for the nearest amplifier, made all the connections and switched on. Nada. Zilch. Not the slightest of whimpers,valve heating or whatever from the amp. Took the lid off, mostly to check re any internal fuse (there wasn't one) and noticed a variation from the norm, in the shape of an unusual connector which was wired very integrally into the general gubbins of the machine (pics 1-3). After much scratching of the head and consultation with my Guru, Noel, he suggested that it was the main tranny that was missing, which a check on another amp (pic 4) soon confimed. But we could not come up with a reason, as the amps as originally desigend would have taken into consideration factors such as hum and interference of any kind from the tranny. And it was a neat enough job to be professional or even original. And it still left the problem of an unidentified connector leading presumably to a box containing the missing tranny. I began to wonder if a major re-wiring job was looming before the amp could be made useable.

This is where it became apparent that my brain had really let me down. After much further cudgelling of the said organ and hunting round for any possible lead to fit the strange socket, a vague memory began to intrude, of a box with a strange plug that I had carefully examined a few years ago and completely failed to identify. Luckily, I did not re-deploy the rather nice box or toss the whole thing out, tho' at the time I had no idea what it was for - quite apart from anything else, it had no mains input socket. Of course, as soon as I thought of it once more, everything began to click into place. The weird connector was there and, Lo and Behold! inside was a standard Heurtier mains tranny. I felt a right drongo for having failed for so long to make the connection (pun intended). Sadly, however, altho' the amp came alive, it produced only those eerie wailing noises one associates with tuning old valve radios, and no coherent sound at all. A re-try with a second amp gave similar results but with a bit of sound track mixed in. More amps to try yet!

March 2019

Back into chemo beginning last week. Still, previous lot lasted me from 2005 and altho' I can't expect to do as well this time, I spose I shouldn't complain.

I have been reviewing some stuff I have accumulated over the years that I must now accept I shall never do anything much with. I thought I would show them to you before I even consider entering the shark-infested waters of online auction sites.

 

Many years ago now, I had a 16mm Steenbeck, located in my hallway under the stairs. I would never get away with that sort of thing nowadays of course - senior management have introduced much stricter rules. I used this to check over the hundreds of reels of British Coal films that I acquired as that once-proud organisation was run down, broken up and sold off. I was determined not to let these films just end up in the skip and, even after sets of films had been provided to various national institutions, the surplus was still substantial. I gradually fed these into the cine market over a period of years. I still have a handful myself.

All of which is very much by-the-by except as a non-relevant intro to the next item, which is not a Steenbeck but a Stein and is for 35mm.The main point about this machine is that, altho' it seems to perform much the same sort of function as a Steenbeck, it scores by being foldable and therefore takes up a lot less space. This one has also got a plug-in head for mag trax (pic 6 below).Here are the pix.

 

                         

        

 

February 2019

Lot of health problems, with which I shall not bore you, not to mention much coldness in my workshop, have kept me fairly quiet. This is, however, a chance to share with you (we have to say this sort of thing nowadays) some remarkable pictures Alain Gomet sent to me last year. They seem to be of none otherthan a prototype Debrie model for 9.5mm. It seems to have been based on the 16mm MB216 and is designated the MB295. Looks to have mag sound, too.  Oh, what mite have been!

 

                         

 

'Oo'd a thort it, eh?

November 2018

 

I have added a short page on GIC projectors. And I have finally acquired a complete 17.5 Rural Sonore - no amp, but I have a spare, not that I tend to rely much on original amps anyway.

 

August 2018

 

PATHE PM PROJECTOR - A WARNING

I have only recently (July 2018) gotten around to the point of live testing the PM as a projector (with its amp outside and powered separately). After only a few minutes running, smoke poured out of the motor. It is possible I fed 240v in via the 110v setting, but it is also possible that wires which came loose during the fiddling about process, I replaced wrongly. It now seems that the projector runs only on 240v via the 110v setting or something equally odd, and there a many unpleasant flashes and crackles and spittings if I change the voltage setting while the projector is running. I wonder now if my wiring diagrams, too, are up the spout. Caveat emptor!

I am getting so fed up with this machine that I feel almost inclined to pass it along to someone with greater electrical/electronic skill who might be able to do something with it. Anyone interested?

4th July

 

I have finally gotten round to breaking up the "current" What's New page to make it quicker to load. So what is below was part of Page 8, and there are now also a Page 9 and a page 10. If you want to see these, they are accessible via the What's New tab at top or bottom of the page.

I have been checking a lot of 9.5 in recent times and was getting a bit fed up with all the rewinding it involved. So I gave myself permission to be frivolous for a while and see what I could come uo with. Here is the result, basically a pulley with a dog clutch (male) on one side.



I appreciate it may not be much to look at but I was quite pleased with it. To explain: I have standardised on the Muray type rewinder, raised on blocks to allow it to handle up to 2400' spools, which uses a 6mm shaft to carry various adapters for use with various gauges. As well as the usual 4, I have made adapters for 17.5mm and 28mm to enable me to use the same rewinder for all the gauges I use, bar 35mm. The Muray adapters locate on a pin in the rewinder shaft; this pin only protrudes from one side of the shaft, because the adapters have two separate slote to engage with the pin and on 9.5 these slots are different depths to cater for the variation in 9.5 spool sizes. What this little pulley does is to sit on the rewinder shaft (maybe with some spacing washers) immediately behind the pin in the shaft. The idea is to engage the single-tooth dog clutch into the "spare" slot in the adapter. A motot drive to the pulley via a belt will then provide a power drive. 

I actually lashed up a mains motor with a speed control to try it out, but although it operated, there was insufficient power. Obviously, if I proceed with the idea, I need to make a much larger version of this tiny  pulley (it's only about 0.75" in diameter) to give a reducted ratio from the motor so as to improve the power. I will try to get some more pictures to help.