Mold or oil on videotapes?
 

Hi everyone,

Since years, most of time, what I see is white mold (in powder form). Nothing incredible, pretty easy to remove.

Today I received a tape with that thing on it (see attached). Looks like petrol, I don't know how describe it.
I'm not ready to put it in my vcr for now.

I just want to know if this is dirt or this is worse ? I tried to clean twice, same result. I don't know if the tape itself is damaged or this is just mold/dirt that will dissapear after XX rewind cleaning attempt.

What do you think about it ? Ever seen this ?

There are marks on the tape as you can see

I had some tapes once where there was some oily stuff (seemed like cooking oil or something) on the cassettes themselves. Thankfully there was barely any on the tape itself, just on the shell, so I cleaned it off. No idea what it was or why it was on the tape. I don't know how one would get it off the tape itself, if it's only a very short section maybe you can rub it off with some IPA. Challenge with oil/grease is that solvents that can dissolve it may also end up dissolving the tape binder itself, so I don't know how best to deal with it.

The Binder of the tape is vulnerable to many types of microscopic attack. Rubber tends to liquefy and become sticky. Binder usually drys up and particles flake off. A tape that is still under attack may be anywhere in between and appearing oily is certainly one of the options during the transition to dry and flaky.

A tape under such attack is almost certainly not recoverable and you don't want to put it in your machine, the microscopic residue can clog up the small heads of the vcr which no amount of cleaning solution could clear.

Beyond all of that.. the friction of the drum heads will make small particles and droplets airborne which can get into your lungs and cause dramatic health problems. It seems innocent enough sticking to the tape.. but once that stuff is airborne it gets very dangerous to anyone in the vacinity.

Reassuring...

I'd like to be sure : I can clean my vhs tapes with what ? Alcohol ? What kind of alcohol ? Isopropyl or something else ?