As some said, buy it aged and dry, hardwoods may shape shift and warp when drying.: think of live oak and hard maple: tough on tools, tough to work but how many cameras you going to make? Some hard maple is beautifully "grained" and defects are easily sighted before you cut, plane & fit what should be culled. Bernie
Cocobola or Paduc would make for an interesting camera. Neither is very common, so the look would be more exotic than using Teak or Walnut.
Ciao!
Gordon Moat Photography
Well I have a little experience with some of the exotic woods through my bass guitar building exploits. I will say that probably 98% of guitar necks are either mahogany or maple. That being said the bass I built for myself has a white ash/pau ferro (rosewood) neck. A couple woods that came to mind that have not been mentioned so far that I think are worth considering are Wenge and Zebra wood. Wenge is tough on tools but is tough stuff in general so it wears very well. I don't know what the exact numbers are but it seems lighter to me than other similarly hard woods. Zebra wood is interesting for its aesthetic properties, I don't know exactly how it compares stability wise but it's worth a look.
Originally Posted by Gordon Moat
The thing with both of these is that they fade over time, I have some Cocobolo that was very dramatic at first but now looks a little more of a uniform rust color. Padauk fades in a similar manner. I suppose if a camera spend most of it's life in a case this may be less of an issue.
If you want to get exposure to how some of these exotics age, see if you can find a group of traditional archery people who make or have their bows custom made for them, I am a traditional archer and have many friends who make bows for their living, they are well versed in the way the woods age, how colors change and what type of grain as well as stability each type of wood has. One of the local bowyers here where I live, has more than enough scrap on hand at all times that securing enough wood to build a camera would not be hard or expensive, I have another friend in New Mexico that builds bows, and is willing to send me all of his cut offs and scrape for the price of shipping! Both of these guys import just about any type of wood you can think of. I made knife handles a few years ago, our of their scrapes, and I tell you what, it was a very good learning experience to understand the various properties of dozens of different types of wood, and best of all, it was very little investment on my part, as they normally throw the scrapes in the fireplace or the trash.
So look up a bowyer and you might be surprised at the wide and varied nature of the woods you can work with, without much investment.
Dave
I just finished building my 8x20 out of American Walnut that I have had for a long time. The camera comes in at 14 lbs. It is stable. It is designed like the Korona's of old. With the extension and stabilizer bars maybe 15 lbs. I also made my Walnut tripod. It is 10 lbs. and that is with the big majestic head. Again very stable. Several of you from this site have seen it and it is a beautiful wood to use. I'm building an 11x14 with the left over Walnut!
Jim
1. Walnut 2. Ash 3. Mahagoni or Oak
Thats me as an ex carpenter!
I suggest you make the acquaintance of a wooden boat builder. Buy some of his off cuts and scraps.
I've been giving this some thought as well. I happen to have some left over pieces of Lloyds certified marine plywood. The wood species is Khaya ivorensis, a.k.a. African Mahogany. This wood would rank very well alongside Honduran Mahogany or American cherry. It is a favorite among botbuilders as well.
My candidate for the hard, durable, stable bits is black locust. A lovely light colored wood that is stable, hard, strong, stiff and basiaccly bullet proof without the weight of teak or ebony. It also grows like a weed in North America so sustainablilty is not a problem. Osage orange, Bois d'Arc, would be my second choice. Reclaimed English oak would certainly be an option in the U.K. Iroko is another African hardwaood that used to be popular in boats in the U.K.. I don't know if it still common.
The idea that keeps surfacing in my brain is to use Sitka spruce or Alaska yellow cedar in an epoxy glued laminate. GOOGLE modern boatbuilding techniques for an example of what I'm talking about. 1/8 strips of wood are glued up to the required thickness and then machined to final size. The resulting lamination is far stronger than a piece of the same wood in solid form. Either of these woods has a very high strength to weight ratio. Sitka spruce may be too soft to hold fasteners of the size used in a camera.
Any good modern book on laminated boatbuilding should give you a lot of ideas.
My question: I know the wood can be shaped and joined. I know I can buy bellows. How the heck do you make all the metal bits?
Cheers!
Wayne
Deep in the darkest heart of the North Carolina rainforest.
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1) I read somewhere that the wood in Phillips cameras is sourced from salvaged logs that had been sunk in Lake Superior.
2) Zone VI offered their cameras in cherry, mahogany, and walnut. I remember a newsletter saying that they had made four (4) cameras in pearwood and were offering them at a premium price. I wonder who has them now?
3) In the early 80's Wista offered an ebony camera at 2X normal price- another limited run.
4) Musical instrument makers choose woods for their tonal properties... what do you want your camera to sound like? Rosewood back and sides will give a louder bass.
5) There was a teak Deardorff copy called the Rajah, made in India in the '80s. It was rickety, but not because of the wood.
6) I'd look at what the 19th century makers did. There was lots of knowledge even then, and the best woods were abundant and cheap.
7)I've used wooden camera made of maple (Ansco), cherry (Tachihara), and mahogany (Z-VI among others). All of them worked well.
Aircraft plywood?.. Anyone?
If you insist on solid wood, make sure it's quarted or flat-sawn. Less warpage.
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