Flood damaged tapes

[Theresa]

Hi everyone--
I have several VHS-C tapes that were inadvertently put on my basement floor after a house fire, and a sudden rainstorm backed up the storm sewer. I dried them out as soon as possible, and ran a few--they looked fine, but had recently discovered to my horror that a few are either ruined or badly damaged. I have noticed that the tapes show dirty water marks. Is there anyway to clean the tapes themselves after I capture them the best I can?
Just wondering.
Thanks in advance!
Theresa

[redwudz]

This is probably best left for restoration experts, but I'll give it a shot, if you don't want to pay for professional restoration.

You could rinse them carefully and throughly in warm distilled water, changing often. Drying is difficult, though. If you could dry them at about 90 degrees F. for a few days, may be the best you can do. Any remaining crud on the tapes would be a problem, though, and could damage your player.

Mold and mildew are the biggest threat. You need to keep the tapes in a very low humidity location to prevent that from growing and to keep them absolutely dry to prevent further damage.

It's a maybe if any of this will work. Water damage is not so much of a problem as the crud that is in the water that gets into them. Good luck.

[Theresa]

Thanks so much, redwudz. This sounds like great advice. I'll see how brave I am!

Thank you so much for replying----

Theresa

[hech54]

Hi guys,

We've been doing a bit of this type of work due to the recent Australian floods. Our approach is firstly to advise clients to keep the tapes wet, rinse them off to remove mud (preferably in distilled water) then pack them into ziplock bags while still wet.

It was great up to here...then it turned into an advertisement.