C. D. Keth
22-Mar-2009, 00:08
Hey, everyone. Remember way back in the fall when I bought a kodak 2D and started working on restoring it? Yeah, I hardly remember it myself. I got as far as polishing the hardware and then a bunch of things made me stop until a few days ago.
Since then I have altered a front standard from another 2D to work with my front rise hardware. The front standard of my camera had been chopped up so it had front tilt. I want something more or less original looking so I did a little router work. I think it'll work pretty well.
I cleaned up all of the wood pieces and followed some advice I got from a furniture restorer to get some healthy moisture back into the wood. That basically consisted of murphy's oil soap and quite a few very light applications of lemon oil. I let that sit for about a week, rubbing it every day with a clean cloth to catch the oil that the wood rejected. The idea is that, with some time, the wood comes to a sort of equilibrium with the environment.
With the wood all happy, I wanted to give it a more protective finish than the 80-year-old whatever they put on them back in the day. After some research, I came up with this water based rub-on polyurethane. It's pretty sweet stuff and goes on very thin. The nice part is that it cleans up with soap and water and has virtually no odor. I did it in my living room. The wood got 3 coats of the poly on top of the old finish. I originally was going to completely refinish the camera but I decided to keep the old finish, nicks, scratches and all. I like that it looks like an old camera and didn't want to change that. Call it a functional refurbish job, I guess.
Tonight I reassembled everything except the front standard. I left the bellows off because they're kind of a pain to handle and I want to screw them on once and only once. I took some quick photos of how it looks now. I'll take nicer ones and update this thread when it's 100% complete in several days.
First, a few photos of what I started with:
http://www.christopherketh.com/images/2DOriginal1.JPG
http://www.christopherketh.com/images/2DOriginal4.JPG
http://www.christopherketh.com/images/2DOriginal5.JPG
http://www.christopherketh.com/images/2DOriginal10.JPG
Since then I have altered a front standard from another 2D to work with my front rise hardware. The front standard of my camera had been chopped up so it had front tilt. I want something more or less original looking so I did a little router work. I think it'll work pretty well.
I cleaned up all of the wood pieces and followed some advice I got from a furniture restorer to get some healthy moisture back into the wood. That basically consisted of murphy's oil soap and quite a few very light applications of lemon oil. I let that sit for about a week, rubbing it every day with a clean cloth to catch the oil that the wood rejected. The idea is that, with some time, the wood comes to a sort of equilibrium with the environment.
With the wood all happy, I wanted to give it a more protective finish than the 80-year-old whatever they put on them back in the day. After some research, I came up with this water based rub-on polyurethane. It's pretty sweet stuff and goes on very thin. The nice part is that it cleans up with soap and water and has virtually no odor. I did it in my living room. The wood got 3 coats of the poly on top of the old finish. I originally was going to completely refinish the camera but I decided to keep the old finish, nicks, scratches and all. I like that it looks like an old camera and didn't want to change that. Call it a functional refurbish job, I guess.
Tonight I reassembled everything except the front standard. I left the bellows off because they're kind of a pain to handle and I want to screw them on once and only once. I took some quick photos of how it looks now. I'll take nicer ones and update this thread when it's 100% complete in several days.
First, a few photos of what I started with:
http://www.christopherketh.com/images/2DOriginal1.JPG
http://www.christopherketh.com/images/2DOriginal4.JPG
http://www.christopherketh.com/images/2DOriginal5.JPG
http://www.christopherketh.com/images/2DOriginal10.JPG