FRENCH SPLIT REELS FOR 16 MM ARE NOT STANDARDIZED

I really regretted not buying more 16 mm split reels  manufactured by decades by Julio Castells in Barcelona! They were cheap and of excellent quality, in alluminium.  I only have one! These types of split reels are used to manipulate the films when they arrive from the laboratory, in cores, to transfer them to standard reels ready for projection.

16 mm split reel with ORTF core standard

In all Christian countries these plastic cores are standardized in two sizes. In all the countries? No.  There is a country, which in its day was also the one that had a color television system, SECAM, different from the rest of Western Europe, which, as I just discovered, has also a different standard for 16 mm cores, called ORTF standard (acronym for the French public television). 

At the bottom, the ORTF core for split reel, different from the two standardized 16mm cores.

I promised myself happiness with a French supplier who has an inexhaustible stock of these reels, to be able to project certain titles I like on cores in my secret film vault, but all the joy in a well: they are useless. Caution with the split reels coming from the country of Melenchon!