Be careful not to spoil the light-tightness of the end caps & you're
good to go.
I've got several "reusable" cartridges that turned out to be old
commercial cartridges with a plastic label applied to hide the original
artwork.
Actually, when I was running the mini-lab I kept several Chinese
commercial C-41 cartridges that had plastic labels over the original
Fuji film artwork (not just re-badged Fuji film because the underlying
cartridges were originally Fujichrome E-6).
So they can not only be reused for hand reloading, they were sometimes
reused for commercial reloading.
Also, the way we processed film at the mini-lab left a VERY short leader
sticking out of the cartridge. If you're careful *NOT* to rewind that
leader into the cartridge, you don't need to pop the ends off the cartridge.
Just tape the end of your bulk film to the leader & use it to pull the
film into the cartridge. Once you've got a couple of turns on friction
will help to keep it from slipping off if the tape doesn't hold.
But, if you rewind it & lose that leader inside the cartridge, it's not
long enough to retrieve with a leader extractor.
When I ran the mini-lab we had a big box to throw the old cartridges
into. When it filled up it got taped up & shipped back to Kodak for
recycling. I bet, if you can still find a mini-lab where you are, you
could ask and they'd let you take something like a gallon zip lock bag
full of used cartridges away with you. Might even let you pick through
the box to find the ones the stub leader hasn't been retracted yet.
Probably won't even have to ask "Pretty Please!"
One thing about mini-labs.
You can take the occasional E-6 in and have it cross processed without
hurting their chemistry and you get some really different negatives.
But, NEVER, EVER take traditional B&W films to a mini-lab. The average
mini-lab operator drone won't know what it is & they won't know any
better than to send it through the C-41 processor. It can mess up their
chemistry a little bit (they'll get over it if they even notice), and it
will definitely EFF UP your film.
On 7/20/2013 5:57 PM, Mark C wrote:
On 7/20/2013 11:18 AM, John Sessoms wrote:
I seem to have inherited the pack-rat gene as a dominant from both
parents ...
Then you are probably the right person to ask this question - can you
re-use commercial film canisters? I am somewhat embarrassed to admit
this in a public forum but I just developed 2 rolls of Pro-Max 100. Just
for the fun of it I tried popping the end of each canister off with just
my fingers, no can opener. They came off easily and after the film was
spooled I put the canister, center spool and ends back together. Both of
them look perfectly serviceable. Did you ever try re-using the actual
canister? I don't think this would work with Kodak or Fuji canisters -
the end caps on those seem to be held on tight and a can opener is
needed to get them off - but who knows about other brands, like
UltraFine and Adox etc...
If I can reuse the canisters, which normally sell for about $1 each,
then the $1.75 per roll I paid for the Pro Max was not a terribly bad deal.
Mark
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