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On Monday, 25 May 2020 09:34:32 UTC+1, NY wrote:

When you play the films for the first time, keep your hand on the
projector's off switch, ready to switch off if the film doesn't feed
properly.

Instant meltdown if the film fails to feed. How much of an issue that is
with 8mm I don't know, I only ran 16 & 35. I wouldn't be surprised if you
could use an IR filter to reduce the problem, never tried.

Hence always do the feeding with the bulb off, and then when the film is
running OK, turn the bulb on - and hope the film doesn't jam later on. In my
experience, some films (mainly the Fuji) seemed to be more prone to folding
up in the gap between the feed sprocket and the gate. It was rare to get a
jam after the gate: the usual failure there was loss of the intentional
slack before the sound head - once the film pulled taut, it came out of the
feed claw in the gate, leading to blurred pictures which jumped vertically
because the shutter opened during the time that the film was advancing. I
earned a few brownie points on a course that I was on, when the 16 mm
projector suddenly started doing that. I knew of the symptom and the cause
from my dad's Super 8 projector, so it was just a matter of finding the
corresponding location of the take-up sprocket, unthreading the film to feed
a couple of frames back through the sound heads to re-create the loop, and
the job was done.