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  1. 8mm tapes are so thin that it tears easily when it gets moldy. Any way to repair it? Immerse it in some kind of liquid like isopropyl alcohol?
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  2. Member
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    I would not use alcohol on magnetic tape. Try hydrogen peroxide solution to kill mold. Are you sure you have mold and not some other kind of breakdown?
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  3. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    You are more likely to ruin a tape than repair it. It's NOT as easy as it sounds.

    I've seen some really stupid video on Youtube, but the person is just f'ing up the VCRs/cameras where it'll be used, and harming any tape later put into any VCR/camera that played the tape. So one moldy tape will suddenly be a library of moldy tapes. And the tape cleaning wasn't proper, merely made the tape wet again. You probably fed the mold spores moisture (% of water/etc in the non-100% alcohol), and the spores are what you worry about.

    Send it to specbros.com if you at all care about the content.

    Only DIY if you'll willing to completely f'up a VCR/camera, and only if you wear a mask, and do this outside.
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  4. Specbros is expensive. Someone should devise a cheaper DIY solution. I'm thinking of soaking it in hydrogen peroxide for a day and bake it for a day. Will it leave residue or emit toxic fumes during baking? Should I use isopropyl alcohol instead?
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    Alcohol can dissolve the binder. Don't immerse the tape. Wipe it with peroxide which will kill the mold on contact. The only gas it will give off is oxygen. But wear a HEPA mask so you don't breathe in spores.
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  6. Thanks for the tip. I broke off the transparent plastic reel blocking access to the tape edges and use IPA soaked Q-tip to clean the little bits of mold and it works. I'll see if it works on very moldy/sticky tape.
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  7. IPA should be neutral but nobody gives warranty as time may lead to spontaneous de-lamination not related to IPA but IPA will be blamed anyway. IMHO it is not possible to safely clean tape without some old (perhaps broken) VCR used as winding machine (so you need to build own machine to clean tapes).
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  8. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by pandy View Post
    IMHO it is not possible to safely clean tape without some old (perhaps broken) VCR used as winding machine (so you need to build own machine to clean tapes).
    Tip: Goodwill has decks for $9.
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ID:	45251I can fix and capture to DVD (I have a tape repair method provided by JVC). The method I use for removing mold does not have any toxic substances. The price is only $30.
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  10. VHS is easy to clean because the tape is thick. Camcorder tapes like Hi8 and Video8 are hard because they are thin.
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  11. This tape was a marriage of a friend of a Zhejiang Province, China, who was married in 1993. When it was sent to me, it could not be played, and it was badly magnetized. After repairs, the capture effect was satisfactory.
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