I'm assuming you mean the engineered granite (that is not actually granite?). Seems very flat, very heavy and very expensive $$$Originally Posted by MrFujicaman
I'm assuming you mean the engineered granite (that is not actually granite?). Seems very flat, very heavy and very expensive $$$
The first thing to check is what is happening to your old baseboard... Take a long straight edge and lay it from the column mating area to the outer corners on it's edge... Put a flashlight behind where they meet, and see how much space you can see between them... If there is no or very little gap, (especially look where the easel would sit on it) and if fairly uniform, you might salvage it... If there are irregular waves, or a "potato chip" shape to it, replace it...
If acceptable, ribbing the bottom with a V shaped pair of ribs with the apex starting from column mounting area, and ribs ending near front corners underneath...
The big alignment problem area is where bottom column mates with baseboard... The wood there is often dented from weight, overtightening, or settling, so good to get a couple of at least 1/4" or thicker aluminium plates with holes drilled so the column mounting bolts can pass through with the plates on top and bottom of baseboard to spread weight over a larger area of the wood...
You can make (or have made) for very reasonable $$$ a baseboard made from two or three layers of 3/4" MDF bonded together with solvent contact cement and formica or tempered smooth press board on the surface... The tricky part is evenly clamping and bonding layers together with even pressure, but a cabinet shop has a vacuum press that works well... This board will be heavy, but the mass will also steady entire enlarger... Get a quote from a shop of how much to construct first, as it's an easy project for them...
Good luck!!!
Steve K
Nope..since granite countertops are all the rage, many of the shops seem to have fair sized scraps left over. Look on Craigslist under materials.
To follow up here, you can see what I'm working with. The base of the enlarger rests on this Uline work table. It's braced above on the wall for stability. However the Uline table is generally over weighted and so it slight bows inward. I've braced it with a floor jack. If I had a team of people maybe I could wall mount it but given the height of the ceiling I don't have the clearance to take off the chassis and thus, remove the counterweights. If I could build a baseboard that could be leveled, I could attach the column to that, wall brace it, and then align the lens/negative stage as needed.
Just wondering if someone has a better solution for me that I'm not thinking of, and does not involve an army of strong people.
I think you're making things way more difficult than necessary by trying to level the enlarger. Let the enlarger remain unleveled, and make a secondary or "false" baseboard that you can adjust to be parallel to the film plane. This is what ic-racer showed in his post. There is no stress on the false baseboard when you do it this way. Any old flat piece of board can work if you add some leveling screws to the corners. Have a look at the pictures in ic-racer's post, and think about how that works.
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