P3D Re: VM reels from Realist slides

[Ronald Beck <ronald-beck@xxxxxx>]

I would like to thank everyone for their suggestions on how to create VM
reels from my Realist format slides.

My preliminary experimentation provided a viewable reel and gave me some
hope for future projects in this area.  Here's a quick review of what I
did.

First, I needed a reel to work with.  Dr T suggested splitting a reel
and mounting the un-trimmed film chips to the reel.  An admirable
suggestion and one I attempted.  Not having any blank reels, I purchased
a VM three pack from our local Toys R Us (the Rugrats series - no loss
in my opinion) and split one of the reels open.  

I then took one of my "not so good" Realist slides and split that mount
open and positioned the chips onto the top half of the VM reel.  A bit
of tape to hold them in place allowed me to stick it into my VM viewer
(clear plastic back to see the mechanism, $0.25 at a garage sale) and
check the results.  A bit of adjusting and I had a passable view.

Of course, the chips covered several of the VM "windows" so I had to
trim it down a bit, but once trimmed and taped, it really looked pretty
good.

Working on this has given me an idea for a mounting and cutting jig to
assist in the alignment and trimming of the realist chips for insertion
to the VM reels w/o splitting them open.  I will continue with the
design of this jig and publish my results once complete.

Either that, or save my money and purchase a VM setup from DDDalia for
Christmas :-) :-)

Thanks all,
Ron


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