How the heck can you do that in daylight? I saw where you said it was easy but I can't imagine it being easy, nor that quick. I'm clearly missing something about it. You somehow cut it down narrower while it's on the 120 spool, then turn the lights off for the re-spooling I presume. I might be able to do the respooling if it were cut, probably sacrifice a roll to play with in the light first, but I can't imagine how to cut the 120 down narrower in the light. I would have thought you'd have to stretch it against some kind of guide in the dark, which would also open the possibility of getting dust on it as in loading sheet film holders.
I've done it by rolling the roll on a table, with a snap-blade knife on a mark on the backing paper, or by grabbing one end flange in my lathe chuck, supporting the other end on the dead center, and spinning the roll (again cutting with a utility or snap-blade knife to a mark). There are also 3D printed cutters available, one of which does the first spool transfer to a 127 spool and has daylight sealing, another just automates the process of cutting the roll. You'll want to be sure you're leaving the 6x4.5 framing track on the 46 mm strip in order to work correctly in 4x4 cameras.
BTW, with a little care in the darkroom part of this, you can get two barely-sufficient Minolta 16 strips from the "waste" of the 120 roll, or one grossly over length strip, even for a Kiev 30.
Donald Qualls said,
"If you're using recut 120 backing, however, you still have the framing issue with full and half frame cameras"
Why and how is this? And, doesn't "full and half frame cameras" cover all of them?
Just trying to learn something here.
Thanks,
Robert
There are three frame formats in 127. The original in 1911 was 4x6.5 ("full frame") and by the 1920s there were 4x3.25 "half frame" which produced some of the tiniest film cameras ever (with reasonably sized negatives), among them the Nagel/Kodak Vollenda and the Baby Ikonta. Then, after WWII, came the 4x4 revolution (presaged by the pre-War Baby Rolleiflex) and the jump of 127 to (briefly) consumer camera kingship (only to be struck down by 126 in the 1960s).
Recut 120, as noted by
@Roger Cole, has incorrect spacing for all three -- for post-War 127 cameras with their 4x4 frame, but still using red window, the 6x4.5 framing track is in play, and just gives a little extra space between frames. For 4x6.5, the 6x6 frame is just a little too narrow, giving a couple millimeters of overlap -- which is much more noticeable on half-frame 127 cameras, because the double red window doesn't evenly split the undersize spacing on the backing; you'll get one pair with very little overlap, and the next with a lot.
And
@Tel No, the 4x6.5 and 4x4 are different tracks. 4x6.5 is in the center (usually at one end of the film door), with 4x3.25 having two windows on that same track; the 4x4 is at the edge of the backing (usually in a corner of the camera back). This is why recut 120 (with the correct edge preserved) works fairly well in both, because after trimming 15+ mm off the 6x9 track edge, you're left with two tracks that are visible through the two window positions on 127 cameras.