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Thread: 'Journey' in trying to build a 1850 sliding box camera

  1. #11
    Ron (Netherlands)'s Avatar
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    Re: 'Journey' in trying to build a 1850 sliding box camera

    Just an in between pic - cluttered working bench - at the very right side there lays my old rip saw with which I resaw the panels of the main and middle boxes...
    ...the bottle of shellac has yet to wait for quite some time before it'll get used....



    This little tool comes in handy when checking for squareness:



    some of the tools required for the job:
    The handles at the right side were secondhand bought for my sawfiles: since I had to resaw the panels by hand the saw became very soon blunt because of the hard tropic teak...



    Below the old saw had to be rejuvenated before I could make use of it (derust, sharpen and smoothen the handle):

    Last edited by Ron (Netherlands); 14-Aug-2021 at 05:29.
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  2. #12
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    Re: 'Journey' in trying to build a 1850 sliding box camera

    No camera without a lens panel. In order to provide support for a lens panel I first placed some small pieces of wood near the front sides of the main box.



    Although many of these early sliding box camera's have a fixed lens panel, I choose for interchangeability since I wanted the option to try different lenses the easy way. Here are pictures of the panel in rough an later glued and sanded state:



    Not yet glued but just put in front of the main box.



    Below a picture of the glued and sanded lens panel. Lying next to the lens panel are the 'struts' that will be part of the main box and will hold the panel at its place

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  3. #13
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    Re: 'Journey' in trying to build a 1850 sliding box camera

    The side struts are glued and sanded together with the lens panel:



    Last edited by Ron (Netherlands); 14-Aug-2021 at 05:30.
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  4. #14
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    Re: 'Journey' in trying to build a 1850 sliding box camera

    No sliding box camera without a slider:

    Most of the early camera's I saw had sliders from brass or no slider but just a screw that attached the back panel onto the base: I choose for a brass slider, which consist of a little brass strip, fastened with a knurled thump nut and a matching screw.
    Luckily the old teak table had two brass hooks for attaching side tables so I took one of these slots and cut it to size. It already had a screw hole but later I had to make it a little bigger:



    For the thumb nut I had put an ad in the 'wanted to buy' section since it didn't seem to be easy to acquire one. Four members did respond and two bought me 4 different nuts and matching screws so I had something to choose from :-) Here is a pictures of the different nuts.

    The one at the far left side is from one of my vintage camera's; I sought a comparable one but the local hardware store had only a matching screw for it. Two others were sent from Canada, the other from the US. All are very nice: the bigger Canadian (#10-32) and the smaller US (#12-24) are both very suitable. I might also mention that one member offered to make one with his lathe, but since I had already ordered the 4, I didn't make use of the kind offer.



    Here is a picture of all the slider parts put together:

    Last edited by Ron (Netherlands); 12-Sep-2021 at 13:18.
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    Re: 'Journey' in trying to build a 1850 sliding box camera

    Next the base had to be glued and sanded:

    Last edited by Ron (Netherlands); 30-Jul-2021 at 14:55.
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  6. #16
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    Re: 'Journey' in trying to build a 1850 sliding box camera

    After the base had finished the next challenge arose: how to attach the main box to the base? Since I hadn't blue prints (are there any?) of the vintage sliding box camera's it was not easy to find out how the oldies were attached. I went back to the collected pictures and found some that showed the base. It appeared there were quite different attachments used: some were just screwed other seemed to have been nailed and others only glued.

    Here are some of them which also give you an idea of the difference in the base used:





    Last edited by Ron (Netherlands); 14-Aug-2021 at 05:34.
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  7. #17
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    Re: 'Journey' in trying to build a 1850 sliding box camera

    Although I had not seen this done before I decided to use as an extra reinforcement wooden dowels in addition to gluing. So I made some of the same teak wood by attaching a square sawn rod shaped with a knife into an 8 angled rod and putting it in my electric drill, turning the wood into my hands holding sandpaper until it got the right dimensions. Here is a picture of the dowels in the main box and base:



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  8. #18
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    Re: 'Journey' in trying to build a 1850 sliding box camera

    Wood finish > almost all vintage camera's had shellac finish on their wood. I bought a bottle of 500ml 'Fernand Freres' transparent shellac. Although it said 'blond & transparent' it has kind of light orange / red tint; not really bothersome since it provides a nice shine and 'enhances' the natural wood colours. I've put on 4 layers with intermediate light sanding. As a last finish - after the shellac was fully cured - I put on and rubbed in some bees wax.



    But after putting on the finish on the outside, the main box and middle sliding box had to get a treatment inside: which means blacken...



    Last edited by Ron (Netherlands); 12-Sep-2021 at 13:20.
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  9. #19
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    Re: 'Journey' in trying to build a 1850 sliding box camera

    Two parts of the camera had to be attached: the main box and the base....some big clamps come in handy



    ....in the mean time thinking about what lens to put on....
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  10. #20
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    Re: 'Journey' in trying to build a 1850 sliding box camera

    Below some pics of the completed camera body - stil have to do some little refinements on the film holder...



    ..and with the slider and thumb nut...





    ...now lets see if I can find a matching lens for this one....
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