Gordon / Morse B-5 Aerial Film Processor. Any Information Please

I got my hands on a Morse wind rewind processor. Has a motor drive unit. Was distributed by Gordon Enterprises. For processing film 70mm upto 9 1/2" it's cool as hell. Looking for any info, tech drawings, service manuals etc. I am going to use it to process roll color paper.

Wouldn't that thing be selfexplanatory once one mounted a strip of paper, pushed in the mains cable and flipped that switch to see what happens?

You need to find an old US Army Air Corps/Signal Corps training manual for darkroom practices.

Check here: https://guides.loc.gov/us-army-technical-manuals/obtaining-copies

https://guides.loc.gov/us-army-technical-manuals/series-11-signal-corps
Starting at 11-400 is the photographic section; there may be more in the page, I haven't checked.

Here's a promising site: https://archive.org/search.php?query=army TM photography

It's a starting point...

Over here the use of that in a commercial lab would even be prohibited due to lack of electric safety.

I bet Jim Galli would love to have one of those to process the film from his Cirkut cameras...

Ever used a Morse G3?

It's the little brother to the G5 and it is a horrible little device that is impossible to produce anything other than wildly varying quality strips of film. Aerial oxidation, uneven frames, endless cranking; its the pits.

Sorry, but they were designed for front line, wartime use to get barely acceptable results from gun cameras and aerial recon film where convenience/time (as opposed to dispatching to a lab) was of the utmost importance. I have had both and both of them were highly impractical.

Just my opinion.

Here is a pdf instruction. It's about IR film, but mentions the processor.
https://www.phred.org/~josh/photo/ti0132.pdf

Kino said:

Ever used a Morse G3?

It's the little brother to the G5 and it is a horrible little device that is impossible to produce anything other than wildly varying quality strips of film. Aerial oxidation, uneven frames, endless cranking; its the pits.

Sorry, but they were designed for front line, wartime use to get barely acceptable results from gun cameras and aerial recon film where convenience/time (as opposed to dispatching to a lab) was of the utmost importance. I have had both and both of them were highly impractical.

Just my opinion.

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Still probably better than trying to wrangle a five foot strip of film endwise into a section of drain pipe for processing -- and then get it out, wet, without scratching. And being limited to that length, because any more would both take a prohibitive quantity of chemistry and be impossible to handle in that kind of processing equipment.

I've heard rewind processors work fairly well for movie film, as long as you can make the process time long enough to get a couple round trips from one spool to the other between solution changes -- and here's one actually designed for film wider than 5". Making a long process is easy -- Rodinal 1:50 (or equivalent) will give 15 minutes or so at room temperature. That alone goes a long way to alleviate the unevenness. You could also quite reasonably use one of these with a two-bath developer.

Good point about the 2-bath developer.

There are 2 issues with rewind processors:

-) the uneven film/paper speed at a one direction run
-) the phases of coverage without fresh bath, even without diffusion

The more runs during the processing time, the more the respective effects are levelled out.

I'm going to use this for RA-4 I bought a beautiful roll easel, has masks for everything. This processor will handle upto 9.5 inch x 250 feet. I've got it figured out. I would like a original parts list for the motor drive unit.
The drive belts say Hoover on them, so could be that they used Hoover vacuum cleaner belts from the factory. I ordered some of the Hoover belts.
The electrical is a bit dicey, non-polarized, ungrounded cord. I have to be careful the wiring is at least 60-70 years old.

I probably won't use the motor, but would like it to work. Some kids at RIT figured out how to lay the rollers on their side in a tray, I can do this and hand crank it nicely. Use a half gallon of chemistry rather than the 6.5 gallons those big tanks hold.

Still it would be nice to use the motor for washing. I've got an Ilford RC dryer so that's covered. More incredibly fun projects for this crazy man

mshchem said:

The electrical is a bit dicey, non-polarized, ungrounded cord.

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The very first thing to do is to exchange that cable for a new one with grounding, which of course needs decent connection inside the apparatus and a respective wall outlet.

mshchem said:

The electrical is a bit dicey, non-polarized, ungrounded cord. I have to be careful the wiring is at least 60-70 years old.

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Use a (correctly installed) GFCI outlet and you're protected. A (USA) UL listed GFCI will interrupt a 10 mA imbalance between hot and neutral (leakage) in less than one current cycle. You'll never know you got shocked. Still not a bad idea to replace the cord, but you'd gain nothing by attempting to convert to three-wire and ground the machine chassis.

Donald Qualls said:

..., but you'd gain nothing by attempting to convert to three-wire and ground the machine chassis.

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Well, to yield a better conductor than the human body was the safety concept over here in Europe for about hundred years. And still is, nonwithstanding residual current breakers or not. That device would not be legal over here.

Donald Qualls said:

Use a (correctly installed) GFCI outlet and you're protected. A (USA) UL listed GFCI will interrupt a 10 mA imbalance between hot and neutral (leakage) in less than one current cycle. You'll never know you got shocked. Still not a bad idea to replace the cord, but you'd gain nothing by attempting to convert to three-wire and ground the machine chassis.

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I installed GFCI in the darkroom. It's not tripping the GFCI so it mustn't be too bad.
This thing is designed to run on AC or DC. 0 to 60 Hz. I found a old guy who has a vacuum cleaner shop. He said that the belts on it, Hoover, were used since the 1920's on. I think this is WWII vintage, the company that made the motor was a vacuum cleaner company taken over for war production during the war.
Itis perfectly functional without the motor. But it's like Mt. Everest, someone had to be 1st

AgX said:

nonwithstanding residual current breakers or not. That device would not be legal over here.

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The American OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) has a broadside I've seen that says, in short, that a grounded cord and plug doesn't protect you, but a GFCI (residual current breaker, as they call them over there) will.

Why?

Electricity doesn't take the path of least resistance; it takes all available paths. If I grab a hot wire that's connected to a lamp, even though there's a connection through the lamp's bulb that has lower resistance than the dry skin of my hand, some (tiny) fraction of the current will still pass through my body -- and with American 60Hz AC, if as little as 30 mA of that current runs across my chest, it may induce ventricular fibrillation. If it does so, and there's no one nearby who notices me collapse and either knows CPR or has and knows how to operate a defibrillator, I'll die. On the spot. In less time than it takes for paramedics to arrive.

On the other hand, if the lamp cord is protected by a residual current breaker or GFCI, the device will trip and shut off the voltage to the wire I've grabbed, at one third the potentially lethal level of current (10 mA is low enough most people can't even feel it), and in less than 1/60 of a second (much too fast for the current to induce ion flow that can reduce the skin resistance). In other words, a GFCI will save me where a ground wire won't. What a ground wire does is ensure that a misconnection from hot wire to conductive frame will blow the overcurrent breaker for the circuit -- which might prevent a fire, but won't save the guy who's got part of that current running from one hand to the other (common circuit breakers take anywhere up to ten current cycles to trip on a big overload, much longer if they're barely over their rated limit; slow-blow will run as much as twenty times that long -- and that's long enough to kick the heart out of rhythm, at least part of the time).

Then there's the whole issue of miswired outlets -- I'm not even an electrician, but I've seen a good number of outlets in American homes that had egregious errors like ground tied to neutral, ground just not connected, ground tied to a water pipe (which used to run into the ground, but now connects to a plastic replacement pipe, so isn't actually grounded).

A device with a metal frame should be grounded (because popping the GFCI whenever you connect the mains plug is a clue there's a problem), and that device probably couldn't be sold without a ground today, but any electrical device, grounded or not, used in an environment like a kitchen, bathroom, or darkroom ought to be plugged into a GFCI circuit. I'd be confident using a device like this one on a GFCI circuit with that two-wire cord, even in a location where I might have one hand on the device frame and the other in grounded standing water or touching a cold water pipe (in a house old enough to still have metal plumbing) -- but if I had such a setup, I'd certainly test the GFCI frequently.

mshchem said:

I installed GFCI in the darkroom. It's not tripping the GFCI so it mustn't be too bad.

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The problem is, it could become bad. But more important, it is neither protective insulated nor got protective grounding but is used in a water-bath. A bit of splashing...

GFCI as such does not say much. Over here from the 70's onwards they were installed in private homes. But those had 500mA threshold. Enough to kill you.
One thus needs such with much lesser thresholds, as 15mA.

Problem with these though is that they might constantly trigger due insulation leakages, as in garden installations, thus one needs several of these spread over many circuits. Not many homes have such.
Best practice would be to install such just up-front a critical apparatus, as in the mains connection.

AgX said:

Best practice would be to install such just up-front a critical apparatus, as in the mains connection.

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New construction in the US, I've been told by working electricians, has improved breakers that combine GFCI function with arc flash interrupters -- but the way I'm used to seeing GFCI is either installed as an outlet, the last possible point before the appliance, or (I have this at work) as a sort of "dongle" -- a half meter extension cord with a single outlet, and the GFCI in line. This greatly simplifies replacing the GFCI if a massive overload (I've seen this happen), or a long string of trips, causes the unit to fail. Wish my workplace was a little stricter on keeping these tested, replaced, and mandatory; we've got a technician who considers it a joke if he gets a shock, and doesn't bother to ask for a replacement when his GFCI dies (he also pops his breakers a lot -- seems negligent to me). Eventually someone in the shop is going to have to try to restart him...

All new construction requires arc detection breakers for bedrooms. My first house, I would listen to a AM radio in the morning. I would get weird static on one circuit. I did some looking, someone had used diagonal cutters as a wire stripper the wire had been partially cut through, eventually the conductor parted and it was making a little arc spark transmitter of sorts. It wasn't real bad when I found it but that's how things start.

Back to my original topic, does anyone have any idea where I could find a manual, or military book on this stuff. From the looks of it I'm pretty sure it's mid 40's into early 60's.

I got a great lot of aerial surveying textbooks, with hints at, but no manual on rewinding processors, let alone this model.

Thus I only can repeat myself "Isn't that thing selfexplanatory, if not at first glance, then at switchingh it on in a test set-up?"

I guess I'll call the OP if I ever find and shoot a roll of film for my Fairchild K-20

I got the power drive going. Takes 6 Hoover vacuum cleaner belts. I think this unit was made during WWII. It has a "Universal motor" 115V AC or DC. Unpolarized plug, no ribbing or any indication of which wire was the "hot wire" I figured it out working my way back from the switch. Now I can but a proper 3 wire plug.

I want to try using for processing color roll paper. I think I will crank by hand. Maybe use the power head for washing?

Now I need to put a roll of paper in my roll easel. Insanity is so much fun.

6 belts? That thing is no garden tiller with all that torque. Thus seemingly the rotating speed reduction is achieved by staggered belt-drives and not by gears.

But what I am more interested in is the way the reversing is controlled and achieved.
Interesting what you wrote about polarity, as the AC, single-phase motors, used over here, do not care about polarity and our mains plugs are not polarized either.

Moving 250 feet of 9.5 inch wide film takes torque.

Here's the finished unit grounded with proper plug cord is ok.

Without the cover