Are We Big?

Occasionally we feel like a big transfer house. In reality we are a small Mom-and-Pop store … without the “store” part!

Back to our Delusion of Grandeur: It kicks in when we need to replenish our slowly dwindling 8 mm plastic reels stock. We order our reels directly from the manufacturer, Tayloreel. Tayloreel will not sell in quantities less than their one case minimum — we are talking many, many reels, here — requiring us to order more of these 400-foot reels than we might immediately need. Just to spice things up a bit — and to keep us on our toes — Tayloreel sells the cans that house these reels in a case-quantity differing from that of the reels, themselves! Thus, we always end up with either extra reels or extra cans.

New, 400-ft plastic Tayloreel with blue case.

When ordering from Tayloreel, we often wonder if we will ever use up all those reels! After all, it takes 8 small 3-inch reels (50-ft film reels) to fill up one Tayloreel 400-ft reel. Occasionally, if needed, we will squeeze an extra small reel onto that full reel, but doing so makes the handling of the wound-up film  a bit more precarious. We figure it's no fun to have an extra small reel, or two, sitting around loose in a collection of these tidy, new, larger 7" reel cans.

Whenever we receive a big case of reels, we always wonder how much more film is really out there, waiting to be spliced together and stored onto these plastic reels. It appears that many of you still do have precious 8mm film awaiting transfer; because, eventually, we need to re-order from Tayloreel!

400-ft blue plastic cases from Tayloreel - cases are needed. We see low-budget transfer houses leave the case out, but that leaves the reel vulnerable to warping and the film exposed to the elements.

By the way: Plastic reels are not inferior to metal reels. In fact, metal reels can degrade your film’s longevity by accelerating its deterioration. This is especially true when metal reels start showing the first signs of rust. Like with these, they are way past their prime.

Author: Nathaniel Courtens