Water damaged tapes

[NightFire]

I have friend with water damaged VHS-C tapes (some have mud all over the cassette shell) that I decided to help him with. He isn't very technically savvy so I thought I would give it try (good challenge). I have a JVC S-VHS VCR that I don't want to damage so I am going to clean his tapes first before trying any conversions. I have seen some automated cleaning systems but most are too expensive except the Kinyo UV-230C. I doubt the Kinyo cleaner will do much but I was thinking about hand cleaning using this method I found at Answer Bag (using distilled water) and then running to the Kinyo also. An old Videohelp discussion is similar to the Answer Bag one. Anyway if anybody has any good suggestions or techniques it would be greatly appreciated.

[edDV]

Seems by the book.
http://www.specsbros.com/h_flood.htm
http://www.archives.gov/preservation/records-emergency/pdf/audio-video-tapes.pdf
http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&chann...=Google+Search

[themaster1]

Imo if you do this manually you're a long way to clean it 100%. It'd be better to build a simple system with a motor ,slow speed (10-40rpm max perhaps) but still faster than manual) and attach something to the motor that fit the forward/rewind holes of your tape.
Then for cleaning with the distilled water you'd need to have coton swabs on both sides of the reel..you get the picture.
Food for thought i hope