Rollfilm spool with unknown number

Taurabon · Thursday at 5:52 PM

I have a question I'd like to ask.
Two film spools whose the numbers of which I'm not sure. One is 129.8mm long, and the other is 126mm long. Both have a wooden shaft about 12mm thick with 31.8mm metal flanges and are stamped KODAK.
Does anyone know what numbers these spools are?
By the way 123rollfilm is 119.5mm long, so it's different.
620 spool is for comparison.

MattKing · Thursday at 7:19 PM

This may help: https://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Film_sizes_and_designations
Are the dimensions you quote overall, including the thickness of the flanges, or the distance between the two flanges?
Both sound like the distance between the flanges would be suitable for 5 inch wide film with backing paper on it.

Disconnekt · Thursday at 7:24 PM

Here's a site that has spool measurments for various sizes, hopefully it helps narrow it down:

Roll and cartridge film sizes

Disconnekt · Thursday at 7:42 PM

Looks to be spools for 110 (large format 4x5 rollfilm, not to be confused with the "instamatic" film) and 104 (large format 4 3/4 x 3 3/4 rollfilm)

Taurabon · 2025-08-01T00:32:33-0400

MattKing said:
This may help: https://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Film_sizes_and_designations
Are the dimensions you quote overall, including the thickness of the flanges, or the distance between the two flanges?
Both sound like the distance between the flanges would be suitable for 5 inch wide film with backing paper on it.

Thank you.
This was the first page I opened at this research.
I should say this to the author (wikipedian) rather than to you, but I noticed a number of points that were not factual.
Maybe I should create an account and correct them.

Incidentally, when I measured the nearly 100 old film spools I had collected (by clamping them in various places with vernier calipers), I learned that for most film sizes, the flange thickness is standardized to 0.5mm (25/128 inches?) and the diameter is 1.25 inches.

The numbers I gave in my question were the size including the flanges, and subtracting 1mm from that is the distance between the flanges.

mshchem · 2025-08-01T00:55:29-0400

Taurabon said:
Thank you.
This was the first page I opened at this research.
I should say this to the author (wikipedian) rather than to you, but I noticed a number of points that were not factual.
Maybe I should create an account and correct them.

Incidentally, when I measured the nearly 100 old film spools I had collected (by clamping them in various places with vernier calipers), I learned that for most film sizes, the flange thickness is standardized to 0.5mm (25/128 inches?) and the diameter is 1.25 inches.

The numbers I gave in my question were the size including the flanges, and subtracting 1mm from that is the distance between the flanges.

I would love to hear more about your film spools!! This is great you have been able to save these items. Rare indeed!

Taurabon · 2025-08-01T01:24:46-0400

Disconnekt said:
Here's a site that has spool measurments for various sizes, hopefully it helps narrow it down:

Roll and cartridge film sizes

Great page! Thanks to the author and your knowledge.

There's not much information available about 106 to 114 film for roll holders, so I'm glad to learn about those as well.

Taurabon · 2025-08-01T13:01:11-0400

mshchem said:
I would love to hear more about your film spools!! This is great you have been able to save these items. Rare indeed!

Are you interested?
I'm currently sorting through a pile of spools that I won at auction in order to research film formats.

It seems that a camera collector who has now passed away removed the spools from the cameras he collected and stored them separately. I believe the reason his grandson decided to sell them instead of throwing them away was because he had a good number of them.

There are relatively many 118 and 122 spools, but there are also some rare 101, 105, and 115 spools here and there. Kodak cameras that use these spools were also being put up for auction at the same time. It was quite a nice collection.

mshchem · 2025-08-01T13:15:34-0400

Taurabon said:
Are you interested?
I'm currently sorting through a pile of spools that I won at auction in order to research film formats.

It seems that a camera collector who has now passed away removed the spools from the cameras he collected and stored them separately. I believe the reason his grandson decided to sell them instead of throwing them away was because he had a good number of them.

There are relatively many 118 and 122 spools, but there are also some rare 101, 105, and 115 spools here and there. Kodak cameras that use these spools were also being put up for auction at the same time. It was quite a nice collection.

View attachment 404438

Oh my that's awesome. I have managed to get a few 122 spools with the backing paper. My ongoing dream is to find a way to respool these with film and resurrect a Kodak 3A camera and make postcards! I have a small letter press that I can print the back.
I've never seen so many spools. George Eastman Museum in Rochester is where I would start. I think Todd Gunderson is involved with all the objects, not sure of the name??

Taurabon · 2025-08-01T13:41:27-0400

mshchem said:
Oh my that's awesome. I have managed to get a few 122 spools with the backing paper. My ongoing dream is to find a way to respool these with film and resurrect a Kodak 3A camera and make postcards! I have a small letter press that I can print the back.
I've never seen so many spools. George Eastman Museum in Rochester is where I would start. I think Todd Gunderson is involved with all the objects, not sure of the name??

I also bought some 9cm x 50ft film to revive my 3A FPK and it's sitting in the fridge. Just to be sure, I cut off a end of the film and measured its thickness, which was 0.195mm (about 1/128 inch).
It's much feel like thicker and harder than the original film sheet.

mshchem · 2025-08-01T17:31:16-0400

Taurabon said:
I also bought some 9cm x 50ft film to revive my 3A FPK and it's sitting in the fridge. Just to be sure, I cut off a end of the film and measured its thickness, which was 0.195mm (about 1/128 inch).
It's much feel like thicker and harder than the original film sheet.

View attachment 404444 View attachment 404446

Is it a polyester base?? I suppose that the early 122 film is nitrate, later an ordinary acetate, I'm not sure??? Original 122 would not have been polyester. Could be Ilford is just slitting sheet film stock.

The 120 roll films on polyester are "stiffer" not sure that's the right word, but stand out straight(er) than acetate. I noticed this right away first time I processed Kodak Gold 120, actually seemed easy to load the developing spiral/reel.

Taurabon · 2025-08-02T09:53:01-0400

mshchem said:
Is it a polyester base?? I suppose that the early 122 film is nitrate, later an ordinary acetate, I'm not sure??? Original 122 would not have been polyester. Could be Ilford is just slitting sheet film stock.

The 120 roll films on polyester are "stiffer" not sure that's the right word, but stand out straight(er) than acetate. I noticed this right away first time I processed Kodak Gold 120, actually seemed easy to load the developing spiral/reel.

It was mentioned in this thread, the 9cm x 50ft film I purchased is not suitable for converting to 122.

ULF SPECIALIST FILM MANUFACTURE 2017

For info, we have just released details of the 2017 ULF film run. Full details can be found here: http://www.ilfordphoto.com/products/page.asp?n=137 Press release can be found here: http://www.ilfordphoto.com/pressroom/article.asp?n=218 Kind regards, Neil

www.photrio.com

Well, I'll give it a try and see how it goes.
If it works, I'll try shooting with No. 3A Panoram Kodak too.

Rollfilm spool with unknown number

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