Jeff: Yes, it is possible to remove the mold without destroying the tapes. We do it all the time. Here are a few tips: Do NOT try to remove active mold. Expose the tapes to a dry environment for a period of time to drive the mold into dormancy before trying to remove it. We use a chamber kept around 20% RH for polyester-base tape. You can tell if the mold is dormant when it comes off in a dry powder instead of smearing all over the tape when you wipe it. Dry-wiping off mold only removes the flowering heads and spores from the tape surface. It does not kill the mold in/on the tape. Some mold cannot be removed with a simple dry-wipe. Common liquids used are distilled water, isopropyl and 111 Tri-chlor. The Tri-chlor is the only one that guarantees that the fungus is actually dead but you must be very careful as it is a restricted substance and, if you get it on the plastic reel or cassette shell- it will melt them. If you use liquids to remove the worst sections of mold, only wipe in one direction. Testing shows that if you wipe back-and-forth, in both directions, you can damage the recording surface. We've rebuilt audio decks to remove mold but I would hate to do it with a video deck. Some 10 years or so back, an engineering firm did just that and ended up charging the client around $40,000. We use machines that are custom built specifically to deal with the specific audio, video or data format. It is cheaper and more effective to simply build a cleaner from scratch than to rebuild a video deck. It is still way to expensive unless you plan to clean thousands of tapes. Peter Brothers President SPECS BROS., LLC (973)777-5055 www.specsbros.com Restoration and Disaster Recovery Service Since 1983 > -----Original Message----- > From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List > [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Jeff Brown > Sent: Monday, July 10, 2006 10:25 AM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: [ARSCLIST] Cleaning moldy video tape > > > Given the mechanical fragility of the base material in VHS and Beta > video tapes, is it possible to manually wipe mold from such tapes without > rendering them unplayable? > > And what does anyone think about the chances of success of removing the > head drum from a video transport and building in some sort of > fabric wiping > pad system? > > Jeff > >