Mold Cleaning Before Transferring Nancy Lomeli's VHS
In the preservation world of magnetic tape media, mold is an enemy. It is a hard stop in the process to digitize one's media. This means, if it is identified, the tape must not be played before being cleaned. For many for-profit digitizing companies, this means handing back the tape to their customers while letting them know there is nothing they can do about it because they don't offer mold cleaning services.
T.A.P.E. has been interested in making sure we never have to have that conversation with our patrons. We are consistently impressed with how intact the media is underneath the mold after a cleaning. In this post we're going to discuss the cleaning process used to digitize Nancy Lomeli's birthday party, documented in 1996 in Jalisco, MX at her grandfather's ranch Santa Martha, that is now a historical landmark.
Footage of mold-cleaned VHS, courtesy of Nancy Lomeli
We've recently acquired a cleaner specifically for mold cleaning tapes, donated by our volunteer Jason Flood. But we'll get into how this specific cleaning was done by hand and why.
3D Printed Tape Cleaner
Why does mold grow on tape-based media? We're working on a more technical post about these questions, but for now let's talk about the basics. Magnetic tape media loves a dry, relatively cool and stable environment. Unlike film, the coldest temperatures are not required for healthy tape storage - a stable neutral temperature that is on the cool side is ideal - and humidity levels might be the more important factor for tape storage.
In an environment that is both fluctuating in temperature and humidity, not only will the quality of tape playback be affected due to the physicality of the tape being stressed as their materials loosen and tighten their physical structures - materials that make of the tape base and the binding agent potentially become misaligned, shifted and even detached from the other - but this is a perfect scenario for mold to grow on the media. It's kind of gross but just like mushrooms growing out in the woods, if your tapes are exposed to moisture, and a relative humidity level is maintained or fluctuates high and low, that is a perfect scenario for mold to grow.
How do we know if tapes are moldy? You can physically see it! It can look like a very obvious growth, as in the picture above with the tape on the cleaner where you can easily see the mold present on the tape. It can also be more subtle, sometimes just small dots that you might confuse as dust or dirt. Sometimes the mold is more attached to the spool plastic than the tape itself, but this still would warrant a cleaning, especially if the mold is still active and growing.
If you play a moldy tape in a player, not only are you putting your tapes at risk of damage, but the player itself. You would need to perform a very thorough cleaning for that player and even after that you can't be totally sure mold was not released into the player, providing the potential for it to latch on to your next tapes and affect playback.
Dried mold on Lomeli's tapes
So these tapes belonging to Nancy looked a little different but we knew immediately that it was a moldy situation. As we attempted to wind Nancy's tapes back and forth on their spools we noticed the tape was sticking to itself. Immediately we noticed the mold seemed more dried and sticky, even brownish, potentially a scenario where dust had interacted with the mold when it was more active and in its moist environment. If we were to put the tape on a cleaner the tape likely would have ripped.
Cleaning by hand
We decided to switch modes into a more meticulous and time-consuming method for cleaning - by hand. We used 91% isopropyl alcohol on a small foam swap and saturated the tape underneath its spools enough so that it could begin to unstick itself from the rest of the tape and the sides of the spools. As we cleaned in this way we hand-wound it, making sure the other spool was clean as the tape arrived on it. Once we painstakingly accomplished this hand cleaning and winding, the tape was able to move more easier onto it's spools and looked much cleaner so we assembled it back together and was able to finish the cleaning by using our tape cleaner.
It was a time-consuming process, but there is no other way this tape could have been rescued from becoming not only "lost" media, but lost precious memories for our Patron Nancy Lomeli and her family. We love being able to provide this service - and it's all the more worth it when we to hear feedback like this:
"All my cousins who appear in the videos were very grateful for T.A.P.E. saving our VHS" - Nancy Lomeli
Her mother will be traveling from Mexico for a visit this year - and we're very excited to hear she is bringing us more tapes to transfer!
T.A.P.E.
is a 501(c) 3 non-profit dedicated to faciliating access to analog
media making, preservation, and exhibition. To support our work and
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