When I was a youth in the 1930’s, at a no longer existing Birmingham
telephone exchange, all the fire extinquishers were of the carbon
tetrachioride type. Naughty lads at the exchange used to milk the
extinquisher’s liquid to
clean their flannels with the C.T.C. Years later, this practice was
country-wide and government authorities rumbled it and had the C.T.C.
dyed red, which did not do much good to your flairs or if you were in the
Services, your best uniforms .
Anyway, un-dyed carbon tet is
an excellent medium to clean films. Greasy finger marks and other
drying marks disappear like magic, and the liquid does not affect the
emulsion or the base of. the film; the film never gets tacky.
You have to be careful with carbon tet, Use it in a well, ventilated
room, do hot smoke, (I suppose the hot cigarette-end generates chlorine
gas?), and avoid unnessary vapour inhalation. Carbon tet dissolves some
plastics such as polystyrene. Put a drop on certain plastic frames soon
etches the plastic. Can be useful sometimes, I once joined two cat trays
together to make a large developing dish, using carbon tet, but you can do
better by using polystyrene cement from a model aircraft shop.
For a long time I have been using. carbon tet, to clean films with a dry
cleaner liquid (that’s a misnomer, can a thing be dry and liquid at the
same time?) called ‘Thawpit’. Thawpit seemed to work admirably.
Thawpit was none-inflamable, and it really cleaned films. It left no
traces or damage when applied using a clean handkerchief. To speed up the
drying, finish off with a dry part of the handkerchief.
For some reason Thawpit disappeared from the market, at least from my
part of the world, but I found an identical dry cleaner at Boots It is
called ‘Beaucaire’ and I was happy with it until recently; they still
call it ‘Beaucaire’ but they have altered the product without changing
the name. (Shades of the Barfen CRX/Fuji/Konica fiasco!!). ‘Beaucaire’
is now highly inflammable, no longer as a fire-extinguisher liquid as
Thawpit and Beaucaire used to be.
I made a tour round all the chemists at Oswestry to find out if any
other dry cleaner contained C.T.C. NOT ONE. The only bottle containing
anything that smelled like C. T. C. and none inflammable was Tipp-ex
solvent thinners for typing correction paint. That fluid is not a
contender because it costs 95p for 20m1about ten times the price, of a dry
c1eaner.
Back to Boots again, this time to the dispensary, and asked them if the
sell carbon tetrachloride ”Certainly sir", the price now-a-days is
£3.80 for 500ml. So off, to the Beaucaire counter and bought a bottle of
the new stuff. 89p for 1.50m1. Does it work OK? Yes, just as good as the
C.T.C. for cleaning transparencies. In fact, it is better in one respect,
the .C.T..C. strongly attacks the plastic slide frames , whereas the new
Beaucaire does so, but at a much less extent. Now I have two choices (I
still have some C.T,C.). Firstly, C.T.C, which can choke you with toxic.
fumes, or secondly, the new Beaucaire which can set your house on fire!!
It does look a bit dicey to clean cloths (or slides) in a room having an
open fire.
What about
cassette head cleaning fluid for cleaning your grubby transparencies? ON
NO ACCOUNT USE IT ON SLIDES. Admittedly, it does not attack plastic slide
frames and it will clean the back of transparencies, but, alas, if you put
some on the emulsion side of. the film it. goes tacky and will ruin the
emulsion.
Any other
ideas? Well, I was talking to David Harris (Area 9 member) on this subject
and he came up with a wonderful scheme. Try this one: make a nice great
finger mark on a transparency, it does not matter which side of the film
you spoil. To remove the greasy mark, press a length of Sellotape on the
greasy mark and then peel off the Sellotape, the finger mark comes away
with the tape leaving nothing on the slide. No mess, no liquids and
absolutely clean and you don’t have to dismantle the slide to clean it.
You may have to make a second try though, because you may have had one or
two air bubbles missing the grease. Having tried this method, the only
time I need use a film cleaning liquid now is if I drop the complete film
on the floor, or for some reason or other I have forgotten to use a
wetting agent and thus get a run of drying marks.