Yelco 8mm projector and my 8mm films... help!

[Mike Shaw]

I picked up a YELCO DS-810MT Quartzmatic 2-Track Dual purpose 8mm projector, along with a huge pile of pro sound films, at an auction about a year ago, for just a tenner. It needed a new bulb and a belt, and works perfectly - with the pile of films, so I dumped my tired and rickety old Eumig, somewhere (it is somewhere, but I cannot remember where...).

Today I finally got round to digging out the 8mm films I shot, most of which have been badly damaged in a flood, with the idea of copying them best as I can onto DVDs.

And then I hit the big snag. All my tape reels have a small diameter hole. The projector has wide spindles (the films that came with it, and the take up reel also have wide centre holes - so they worked fine).

If it had been the other way round - I could have fitted a tube over the projector's spindles. But this way round - what can I do? I tried punching out the holes in one of the small reels, and that looks a dodgy process. I can remove the film from one of the wider reels to wind my films onto that, in turn - but don't have the turning arms to do that now (if I could find my old Eumig ... ). It doesn't look as though the projector's spindles can be removed or changed.

I am totally surprised that there are two 'standards' of hole in the film reels - something I hadn't even considered or thought about as a possibility. Has anyone else met with this - and more to the point, found an easy solution - easier that is than trying to carefully transfer loads of reels, bearing in mind that the emulsion is flaking off like crazy - I reckon I have 'one run' at copying most of this stuff - much of it will be totally ruined in the process. I do need to salve as much as I can - they show, for example, the birth of all my children - and the eldest is now over 50: they desperately want copies for their children of course.

Any suggestions (- buy yet another projector?) will be welcome. I thought this projector with its superb balanced lighting would be perfect for the job. But for £10 - which included a good stack of full length movies - plus about another £20 for the lamp and belt, it was still a bargain.

But...

[Mike Shaw]

And just to add to that, I now see that the wide spindle is a 'symptom' of super 8 which I never had. I found my old Eumig - and another one - in the loft (???where/when did I get that other one from???Hmm. I vaguely remember buying it from someone some years ago now, and obviously put it away for that 'one day I'll get around to transferring those films...') . The 'other' one is a dual system - both super 8 and standard 8 (which I thought the Yelco was - it seems not, it is just super-8 ), and it has a dual spindle system for the source arm. The Yelco should have the same, but doesn't.

So I now have options - rewind standard 8 onto super 8 spools as I need them. Or simply use the 'other' Eumig, which seems to be in good condition.

I also have three projectors...

[tom hardwick]

Standard-8 films always used the same spools as ¼" open reel tape. The change to Super-8 in 1965 meant manufacturers had to design a way to ensure that Standard-8 films weren't threaded into a Super-8 projector, as they'd be chewed up by the claw, run at the wrong speed, projected with too big a gate aperture, have the sound heads in the wrong place and so on. I'm sure you know all this.

Spool manufacturers always sold Super-8 film spools and they all came with an adapter that fitted in the centre hole and reduced its diameter down to that of Standard-8 (and ¼" tape).

Dual gauge projectors (as you've realised) have to have feed and takeup spindles that are Standard-8 in diameter, and these projectors came with adapters to increase the spindle size as well as gate plates that could be manually changed (as on Eumigs) or be changed with a lever (Elmo).

You describe your Yelco as a 'dual purpose' and I'm not sure what you mean. Dual was often used to describe the audio tracks, not the gauge capability.

tom.

[Mike Shaw]

Hi Tom

Actually - I didn't know anything about the different spool sizes at all! This is probably because I never went into Super 8, so never came up against it. And when I bought the Yelco and all the films, although the words 'Super 8' were plastered over them, I figured a 'dual purpose' projector could handle both: but you're right. The dual purpose refers to the sound system - it can apparently read a main and a subsidiary sound track (one each side of the film by the look of it), and it can also record sound onto suitable film stock.

Amongst all the stuff was some white leader - which I thought would be very useful for adding to some of my movies which have lost their starts through damage. But there again - wrong! It is super 8 leader: and as you have stated, the hole sizes are different.

Bit late for me to learn all this stuff! At least I have some amazing films to watch at some point (from Bugs Bunny, Benny Hill shows and Charlie Chaplin, to full length features - like Bambi - and BBC documentaries). And, in sorting it all out here - for the first time - I came across a stack of a dozen or so 'home movie' super 8 50' reels, shot in various locations round the world. Whoever's material this all was - I suspect the result of a house sale - there surely must have been family around who perhaps didn't appreciate just what was there. I shall do some detective work and see if I can return at least the family stuff to them.

I had a similar find many many years ago - in the attic of a house we bought was an old water tank filled to the brim with letters from late Victorian times through to the 1st world war. They were mainly between a young girl and an army officer - and amongst all the stuff were the 'dance' programmes, where the men 'booked' a dance during the evening with the ladies. When we moved from there, my daughter-in-law took all the letters, put them into chronological order, and mounted them in albums: then set about trying to locate the family (we knew all the names, of course, and had plenty of reference data to go on). It is well over 30 years since we found the letters - but last year, the descendants of the original couple were finally located and contacted - one of the couple's sons was still alive and well into in his 90s. We're hoping to meet up with them soon to pass over all the letters.