Howdy, not long ago a guy joined into a discussion and left a warning about drilling a camera body which I was contemplating doing. I figure he saved me from an expensive mistake. So, I just wanted to say to those of you thinking about washing your cameras. Wood gets wet, wood swells up. Wood dries out, wood shrinks. Different pieces of wood expand and contract at different rates. This is a property of all wood, and it will do this no matter what kind of finish is on it. I don't know how the corners are joined on this camera, but then again there is no jointery I know of that can take that kind of working very long. And no finish will take that for long either. The older the wood and the older the finish the greater the risk you take with your camera. Teak is no magic wood. It does have a natural oil which makes it rot&bug resistant, as does ceder; that makes them desirable boat lumber. But that same poison-oil property makes teak more difficult to glue. No wood is bug proof forever. All things being equal, if you took two view cameras, one teak and one mahogany, and tied them on a string and hung them from a pier in Hawaii, in theory the teak frame might last a little longer - if its natural oil wasn't baked out, but often the wood is aged or treated in some process in order to make it stable for machine wood working. Best, David
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