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John_4185
27-Sep-2005, 07:16
I'm selling some very old waterhouse stops and got a question that I don't really understand. It was written in good English, so the questioner is not crazy. Perhaps I am.

He asked of what use are the waterhouse stops in question if they are not of a standard "OD" (presuming Outside Diameter). I'm puzzled. Were there standard ODs for very old (probably pre-1910) brass, shutterless camera lenses? (These did not come from repro lenses.) It was my impression from looking at the box of junque lenses that they were made in arbitrary barrel sizes.

Ole Tjugen
27-Sep-2005, 07:36
There were some standard sizes, but there were probably about 50 of them in each country.

But the diameter of the round part of the waterhouse stop should match the inside diameter of the barrel for optimal performance, so that figure is useful to know. I just discovered that my one et of stops fits my one waterhouse-stop barrel lens, but that is only a spectacular coincidence as the stops are English and the lens Swiss.

John_4185
27-Sep-2005, 10:04
Ah fifty standards across as many countries. I appreciate that.

A wee correction: it is not necessarily true that the waterhouse stop has to exactly fit the inside diameter of the lens. It depends upon the way the inside of the lens is made for the stops. Some lenses have two closely set baffles in which the stops fit. The baffles are already somewhat smaller than the inside diameter of the lens, so the stops need not be nearly as wide, nor as tall - only conveniently sized so that the aperture is centered.

Mister Peck, of this group, has a lens with exactly that design, and can (if he is reading) affirm this.

Alan Peck
27-Sep-2005, 14:43
Affirmative.
The "Peck Rapid Rectilinear" I got from John is just such an example. I had purchased a set of stops thinking they were the right size for a lens I had but they weren't. Turns out they're a perfect fit for the Peck RR thanks to the internal baffels. That really made my day :)