Monday, August 21, 2017

derevaun's film splitter

So, I made a film splitter with a couple dollars in parts from the hardware store, an old 120 box camera and instructions from Flickr user, derevaun.  I don't recall where I got the old Falcon-Flex which forms the body of the splitter and provides the film holding and advance functions.  No damage is done to the camera in the process, so if I should ever get a yen to see what the camera can do, that possibility remains available.  Derevaun's advice to get the parts from ACE Hardware turned out to be excellent; they had everything I needed including a very helpful store clerk who helped me find the necessary nuts, screws and washers.



The parts include a long and a short machine screw, a long connector nut, two nuts and two washers.  The cutter is a No. 11 Xacto blade.  The nuts and washers which hold the blade are first screwed on the long screw.  Then, the long screw and the short screw are screwed into either end of the connector nut and adjusted to allow a tight fit in the body of the camera.



The blade holding nuts and washers are adjusted so that the blade is a little less than 46mm from the left side of the compartment.  The tip of the blade rests against the roller on the take-up side with just a millimeter or so protruding above the film plane.  The assembly took about ten minutes.

I had a junk roll of 120 film in my tool box, so I put it in the device, closed the back and rolled the film through the camera.  The roll came out perfectly cut with the wider section being just the right size to fit my 127 cameras.  So, I popped in a roll of Arista Edu Ultra 400 and split that.  I put the camera in my dark bag to remove the film roll.  After separating the film from the backing, I rolled it up and put it into a black 35mm film container.  This evening, I'll take the film into my bathroom/darkroom and roll it into some 127 backing paper.  I illustrated that process for creating 828 film in my 6/25/17 post entitled "rollin' , rollin', rollin...".

3 comments:

Jim Grey said...

That is so clever!

Mike said...

Getting the blade properly adjusted is a little tricky. My first roll was actually a tad too narrow. It went through the camera fine, but the flm had a tendency to jump out of the developing tank reel. I've just sliced another roll of Arista, so I'll get it rolled into some backing paper this evening and maybe see how it goes tomorrow.

JR Smith said...

Very impressed!