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Brassai
20-Feb-2014, 21:53
I see some cool old (c.1900-1920) 4x5 and half plate cameras on ebay that are in great shape, except for the focal plane shutter. How expensive is it to get a shutter cloth replaced and recalibrated? Surely it's not that hard and there's still people doing it. Hopefully that wouldn't cost more than the camera!

Ian Gordon Bilson
20-Feb-2014, 22:14
Aki-Asahi.com offer shutter curtain material. Very good to deal with,too.
You may not need the calibration anyway...

Louis Pacilla
21-Feb-2014, 02:58
Go here and browse around a bit. http://www.graflex.org/

I love my Graflex's and have found some gems which needed only lemon pledge treatment on the curtain and CLA all of which can easily be done at home. You'll find on graflex.org instructions on how to cut a new curtain if need be. You just need the aperture stays from the old curtain and the rest can be found today for a total rebuild at worst.

IanG
21-Feb-2014, 05:33
The shutter cloth for small format shutters isn't usually suitable. I restore old shutters quite regularly and have/use 3 types of cloth.

Be aware there's two major types of Focal plane shutter built into cameras. Graflex cameras use one long shutter cloth with a number of different width slits, so a cloth for a 5x7 portrait Graflex is about 6 ft long. British/European focal plane shutters are usually more sophisticated - scaled up versions of 35mm/120 focal plane cloth shutters with two curtains and a variable slit width. They use small curtains, a fraction of the cloth needed for a Graflex.

Ian