Waiting on Parts

As I've mentioned in previous blog entries, I've been trying to recover from two months of illness progressing from a cold, to flu, and with a stomach virus bug developing sometime in the middle of all of this nonsense.  I've also had some issues with recurring headaches and focus issues which, I assume, are due to my mild TBI from this past summer.  The headaches I've had recently were the same as the headaches I experienced from the TBI so...  it is a fairly safe assumption that these headaches were due to lingering TBI problems.  I have had, however, a couple of hours here and there of decent enough health to start working on some small, light projects.

One project I keep putting aside and then going back to is restoring a folding medium format film camera I recently picked up.  I did a lot of clean up already and this antique camera looks great but it still needs some work before I can load it with some medium format film and give it a whirl.  Shortly after purchasing this camera, I found that the old leather bellows is dry and cracking.  I attempted to patch it but that is only good for a temporary fix... a very temporary fix.  I knew that I would really need to replace that bellows.

Over the past weekend, I contacted a guy overseas about having him make a new accordion bellows for this camera.  This camera is almost 70 years old which means there are no longer spare parts available so this bellows is something that must be custom made by hand.  By the time Monday morning rolled around, I decided to go ahead and order this new bellows.  There was little sense in purchasing this antique camera and not be able to use it.  The sooner I fixed it and restored it, the better.

The bellows compresses easily from a long shape to a flat shape to allow me to be able to fold up this relatively small camera with large film into a relatively tiny package.  This bellows must not leak light though.  If any amount of light leaks through even a tiny pinhole, the film will be overexposed in streaks of light.  It became quite clear very quickly that I would need to replace the bellows on this antique camera so that is now on order.  I should have that in hand in a week or two.  

Once I remove the old bellows and install the new bellows, I suspect I might need to re-calibrate the focus on this classic rangefinder.  In order to accurately calibrate the focus, I would need a 6x6 cm piece of ground glass.  Rather than focusing on film, I would focus on this ground glass and, while viewing it from behind with the back of the camera open, make sure what I see in the viewfinder matches the focus on the ground glass.  This might be a rather tedious task but I should have no major problems with this calibration.  I found a supplier of photographic ground glass in New York so that should arrive in a few days.

In order to figure out how to replace this bellows, I needed to disassemble the lens.  During this disassembly, I realized that I will also need a lens spanner wrench so that is on order as well.  The lens looks quite nice for being about 70 years old.

I've determined how to disassemble the camera and how to swap out the bellows for a new one.  I think my most difficult task will be breaking the old bellows free from the film plane bracket where it is glued to the bracket.  After 70 years, it might be easy to pull the old bellows free from the glue after I soften it up a bit but then I'll need to clean it up before I can glue the new bellows in place.  It will be a little messy and it will probably be a bit frustrating working in a tiny, tight space but I should have no major problems.  

I'm excited to finish restoring this beautiful little medium format camera.  It has been a nice little project and I'm confident it will produce some stunning photographs.