Railfan Technology > Movie Film Cleaning

I have about 800' of 16mm movie film that is in need of a good cleaning. I paid in advance for it to be digitized but only after I paid did I find out that the company will only do a straight transfer, they will not clean or lubricate the film. There is no sense in having the film transferred in the condition it is in now. I do not what to invest in any equipment such as film rewinders since this is the only time I would ever use it. Does anyone know of a mail order web site that offers film cleaning services without having to have the film transferred by them?  I've done many Google searches and have come up empty. The film is of traction subjects with some excursion steam from the 1960s'. I will post some of it here eventually. 
Thanks,
Ken Gear

This brings back memories of a summer job cleaning and inspecting films for the county cooperative that housed and distributed 16mm films for DuPage County schools back in the day. We used special dedicated high-speed machines to clean and if necessary repair splices and broken sprocket holes. My dad was also the audio-visual director at Lake Park HS in Roselle, IL and he used to manually clean films using a manual crank film rewinder (good luck finding one of those today).

At any rate, I did find this on YouTube which is simlar to to process my dad used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Cc-LfcyA4
If the link drops. search for: "Cleaning your films - doing it yourself - film clear - cloth - film viewer - Van Eck Video Services"
If you have access to a film viewer this is a way to clean it.

 

Check out "Legacy" audio video.
I've heard they do it right, including cleaning film and slides, however probably more $$ you will have to spend.

Jim Baker
Riverside, CA

I did manage to find a company that offers a film cleaning and preservation service, Colorlab of Rockville, MD:  http://colorlab.com/
They did a wonderful job, the film looks great!
The film preservation service is $100/hour and the ultrasonic cleaning was 8 cents a foot.
I had 925 feet of 16mm film done for $245.99 which included $21.99 UPS return shipping.
I just thought I would add this to the tread in case someone in the future does a search here looking for this kind of information.
Ken Gear