Ran into a guy at the thrift store who rewinds tapes by hand

I was digging through a bin of old horror VHS at the Goodwill off Highway 17 last weekend, and this older guy next to me starts going on about how he never uses a rewinder machine. He said he thinks the fast rewind mode on VCRs stretches the tape over time and messes with the tracking. I kinda laughed it off at first, but then he showed me a beat-up copy of The Thing that he claimed has played perfectly for 30 years because he always manually rewinds it with a pencil in the spool. Now I'm sitting here looking at my pile of tapes wondering if I've been slowly wrecking them all these years. Has anyone else ever heard of hand-rewinding being better for tape health?

2 comments

2 Comments

campbell.robin24d ago

Hold up. A pencil? Like sticking a Ticonderoga #2 into the tape spool and spinning it around by hand for twenty minutes? I can't even imagine the patience that takes, I'd snap the tape in half on the first twist.

the_wyatt24d ago

You're missing the point. The pencil method is about control, not speed. You can feel the tension in the tape and adjust as you go, way less likely to snap something.