Thanks, and a tip...

[P3D Gregory J. Wageman <gjw@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I just wanted to say "Thanks!" to whomever it was on this list that
recommended the claymation cartoon "Bump in the Night".  I finally caught
it on Saturday morning (VCR is in the shop for weeks...), and *LOVED* it!

It's really a treasure; it's a shame it's confined to the Saturday-morning
toy-advertising ghetto.  For those of you who haven't seen it, it's like
a weird and wonderful cross between Tim Burton's "Nightmare before Christmas"
and Douglas Adams (at least, the one with the "alien invaders" was)...

Now, a time-saving tip for anyone who's using heat-seal Realist mounts.

I got real tired of using an iron on those things, and I got to thinking
about what kind of device I'd design to do the job easier.  I started
thinking about heated, motor-driven rollers, and did a Web search for
same.  Lo and behold, I turned up: Laminating machines!  "Perfect!" thought
I.  So I went to the Yellow Pages and looked up my local laminator supplies
dealer and went over to have a look.  Sure enough, a 4" capacity model,
called a "Pouch Laminator", designed for laminating small items like
business cards, fit the bill perfectly.  It cost me $225 retail.  Cheaper
ones can be had.  But the point is, you just put the heat-seal mount into
a teflon-coated paper carrier, and put the carrier folded-end first into
the machine.  A pair of gear-driven, spring-loaded rollers pulls the
carrier into the machine, and pushes it under the heated plate.  A second
pair of rollers pulls it from under the plate and pushes it out the other
side.  A perfectly flat, heat-sealed mount comes out the other side.  Best
of all, since the slide is in a carrier, there's absolute no danger of
heated metal coming into contact with the film chips.  It only takes seconds
to run one through, you can do an entire roll in maybe 15 minutes.  Heat
up time is only 4-5 minutes.

	-Greg


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