As I only had one double book holder for my 30x40cm (slightly less than 12x16") I decided to attempt to make some additional holders.
I am little coy about this as the present finish of the completed holder is not quite to finish of the camera, but as I understand there are at least 2 people out there with a splendid similar camera but without any sort of holder, I decided now was the time!
First of all, no-one is up to the job of making replica book holders for themselves - and the cost of ordered one from someone who has the mahogany and tooling would be quite prohibitive. Auction sites very very rarely have them.
My solution is to make single sided film holders with about the same thickness of the ground glass holder. Precise thickness is not important as it is the locking system on the front face side of the holder which determines the distance to the film. Extra thickness will just stick out behind the camera. This means that those without a genuine plate holder can use the ground glass holder as a guide for wood dimensions and the "catching" brass strip.
My solution was to use thin strips of "wood" from a wood slated blind (see 1st photo) with alternative overlapping at the corners. This looks like real wood but appears to be some sort of fibre product and a lacquer finish. The important thing is that these have the right dimension for building up layers which provide distance to film plane, "cavity" for dark slide and flange for pressing the sheath into position (or for back loading of film through a rear door). Reducing the thicknesses of the slats, to locate the focussing distance, is quite easy.
Quite a lot of lengths are needed and squaring up of precise sawn lengths takes time. The slats I have worked with, don't like glue much, so sandpapering was necessary. Instead of cutting each slat individually before glueing and clamping, I used the full width slats and then trimed the "sticking out" sections when the frames was rigid. The dark slide was stolen from my wife and is the back plate of a "time and motion studies" loose paper holder.
Cutting the 4 brass corner strips is not too difficult. I used a thickness that was the same as the slat thickness to make things easy. I added a few extra screws to increase my confidence about the slats not giving light leaks. The whole thing was stabilised with a good quality plywood back. The next one will be made with some kind of door and a light seal for back compression loading of sheet film without a sheath.
Rough diagrams and some specific measurements tomorrow.
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