Making a recessed lensboard

I'm going to be making a recessed lensboard (for a Burke and James) for a 90mm Super Angulon XL lens I just got. I've never made a lensboard, and I've only mounted a lens once a long while back. Are there any good resources for the task? I was initially planning on making the board entirely out of hardwood, but then I saw something about needing to mount threads on the inner circle, or using thin sheet metal. Can anyone give me a little direction? Am I taking on a task bigger than I know? I am a little bit nervous about the whole task.

Use thin copper sheet and a soldering iron or torch to join the seams.

Every shutter comes with a nut to fix the lens. So the lensboard doesn't need a thread, only a hole in the accurate size. When the Super-Angulon XL is equipped with a Copal 0 shutter, the size of the hole must be 34,6 mm. The thickness of lensboard can be up to 3,5mm. To align the lens with the f-stop-scale down, there is a little screw. So the lensboard needs a little groove from ca. 1mm too. But this can be made easily with a small file.

Peter K

I don't know the outside dimension of the B&J lensboard, but if it is large enough, you could make a conversion board out of wood, that would then hold the commonly available Linhof-type boards. Then use a Linhof-type recessed lensboard in the wooden conversion board. I did something similar for my old Korona 7x17. It works great and I don't have to make wooden boards for each lens or remount them when I want to use them on the Korona.

If I remember right, the B&J lensboard is 5x5 or larger, so you could go the easy way: buy a recessed board for an old Calumet view camera (4x4 boards), cut an appropriate sized hole in a B&J board and glue the Calumet board to the back. Gives a deep recessed board at low cost and with little effort! I did this to a Cambo board once when I wanted a deeper board than the standard Cambo recessed board.

Hi, there is a guy on ebay called oaklandlenscom that can make a custom recessed board for you for $59. I bought some flat boards for my Kodak 2d from him for $15 each and they fit fine.

Jon