Ansco Restomod

[redshift]

I picked up this old Ansco on the great auction site.

[redshift]

I've been working on it for the past 3 weeks. Completely disassembled and replace all the wood with cherry. Created a lens board adapter so that I could use all my lenses mounted in Wista lens boards. Also made up a back board that would handle a modern revolving back

[redshift]

Bought a bellows from one of the *bay sellers from China. Just finished it today and looked at the first view on the groundglass. Sweet!

[Wayne]

So what was all that wood you replaced with cherry? Rumor used to be that they were cherry, but that has been disproven. I've always wondered what is under my gray, but I love my hideous gray Ansco too much to find out.

[IanG]

I've no recollection of anyone disproving these where made of cherry wood although it's possible these later weren't. The earlier Ansco & Agfa Ansco view cameras were made of cherry wood with a mahogany lacquer finish.

Now you've essentially made a new camera Redshift you should be tready to build a 10x8 or larger You only need to source some hardware, nice work.

Ian

[redshift]

So what was all that wood you replaced with cherry? Rumor used to be that they were cherry, but that has been disproven. I've always wondered what is under my gray, but I love my hideous gray Ansco too much to find out.

I didn't want to ruin any of the old wood parts by stripping the paint but I did find a place that would be covered by metal. The wood looks like a plain grade of mahogany to me. The kind of stuff Luan plywood is made of. It might be called Philippine mahogany as apposed to Honduran mahogany. More tan than red.

You can see the "wiskers" in both the camera part and the piece of mahogany I had on hand. They are little gaps in the grain typical of mahogany and oak, this is certainly not oak.

The other pic is of cherry for comparison.

I'd love to do an 10x8 but the price of a carcass is much higher at recent auctions.

kevin

[Wayne]

I've no recollection of anyone disproving these where made of cherry wood although it's possible these later weren't. The earlier Ansco & Agfa Ansco view cameras were made of cherry wood with a mahogany lacquer finish.

Now you've essentially made a new camera Redshift you should be tready to build a 10x8 or larger You only need to source some hardware, nice work.

Ian

My bad; it was the studio camera that some found to contain different woods. So its possible we have a cherry camera restored to cherry?