[Techman]

I thought that the 16 - 18 frames thing was something to do with the internal fan running at motor speed and not quite being able to cool or lift the fire shutter fully at 16, so the 18 frame speed made it just able to cope with just slight speeding up of a silent film. However, that could just be hearsay!

That 'tape' method of splicing looks quite good on the face of it, but I've had several failures of old splices done this way. The most recent one was on a new (to me) film just this week where first a join in the lead in just fell apart. Then, not far into the film another one caused a problem with the film jumping the sprockets killing the loop. The photo below shows the damage and I admit that as the actual tape is still in place that it could possibly have been that whoever made that splice didn't fully remove all of the original damage to the sprocket holes. To do the job properly I had to cut out about a foot of film, and once again the good old Superglue came to the rescue with the splicer and hot air gun for a perfect repair. All my superglue repairs are so far holding out well.