Does film cement keep forever?

[Charlie Blackfield]

A friend recently presented me with a 1964 Eumig P8 projector. One of the things I found inside the box was a half-empty, small bottle of film cement that probably dates from around the same time as the projector. Looks very much okay to me, although I haven't yet tried it out. This made me wonder: what's the oldest film cement anyone on this forum has ever used successfully?

Charlie

[MIKI-814]

I remember that when I was new to this and started splicing my first film in 1988 I tried to use a Kodak cement which was then about 10 y.o., perfectly closed, and it didn't work well, so my father bought a new bottle for me. For the price of a bottle doen't worth the risk...

[Shanec8mm]

I just use Super Glue and it works great! I've never had a problem nor have I had a single splice go bad. It does take some practice but once you get the hang of it, pretty easy. I even splice free hand, which takes some practice ha.

[RogerG]

Unfortunately, it does not keep forever, especially if the bottle's opened. I recently "restored" all my father's Regular-8 movies shot between 1961 and 1978. When I say restored, I mean redid every splice, then cleaned the film. I believe he used the same bottle of cement from about 1966 - 1978. The splices on the early films were dry, but could generally go through the projector once or twice. The later films, spliced with ancient cement wouldn't run the first splice without breaking.

Most of the lab splices were fine strenthwise. I went ahead and redid them because my Bolex bevel splicer makes super-smooth running splices.

Regarding super-glue - have you ever tried splicing polyester film with that? It would be interesting to try that with the bevel splicer. If the splices held up, they'd probably run smoother than tape splices.

[BAC]

I've used some old yellow cement that was likely at least 20 years old to test a splicer. It didn't make a very strong splice. As far as how long a splice lasts I have some films that date back to the 1940's with cement splices that are still holding up well. If the cement is turning yellow it is likely bad, fresh cement is best. The best thing to do with old cement is make some splices and tug and twist them to see how strong they are. As long as the splice is made correctly with good cement the splice should out-last the person that made it.

[Shanec8mm]

I've never tried super glue on polyester film as all my films are acetate. When using super glue I sand-down the area I want to glue and then apply a small amount of super glue. I let it dry for a few moments, then sand-down any high surface areas, including across the width of the film, and across the edges at the splice. After all splices are made, I clean and lubricate the
film with gun polishing rags. The rags are impregnated with silicone. I've done this cleaning and lubing technique for about 7 years with great results. The silicone seems to last pretty long. I re-clean the films every few years.

[Tommy]

I recently made about 40 splices with a bottle of film cement first opened in the early 70s. After numerous projections, only 2 or 3 broke apart and had to re-spliced ( and perhaps that was due to not using enough to begin with).

[wahiba]

I have a bottle from the mid 1960s that still works fine. I also have a newer bottle, probably from the late 1970s.