Fired up my homebuilt enlarger!

**walter23** · 8-Oct-2006, 20:46

Reducing backs and lensboards with movements - brilliant idea! If you can get it to work I look forward to the reports.

**Rafael Garcia** · 10-Oct-2006, 10:25

Can't get into a hobby without tinkering with the equipment! So far:

Reducing back - have not testeed it with film, but it's done and seems light-tight from my inspection with no lensboard on the camera. Waiting for the Satin Snow glass I ordered to consider it done.

Lensboard with movements - Has worked well. No evidence of unsharp areas due to the axis not being a piece of hardware. If used as I described it seems to work as it should.

5x7 enlarger - Changed the bearings and added the stiffenning support at the focuser. This helps a lot with the binding. Printed some really sharp 8x10s two nights ago, then put it through it's paces in a super-enlargement. Performed very well.

Used rubber gaskets as retaining/mounting rings for some old enlarging lenses that came didn't have mounting flanges. This is a very cheap way to mount the lenses and is holding up very well.

Waiting for a beat-up B&J 4x5 to rebuild and use. It should get here tomorrow.

I will report with photos later.

**Lee Hamiel** · 11-Nov-2006, 12:24

Rafael:

I've enjoyed reading this thread & good work.

One thought for the adjustable baseboard would be to use a geared column tripod - something like a Bogen 3030a or Manfrotto 475 along with a leveling base to allow for fine tuning the whole arrangement.

I envision a tripod mounting plate mounted to the bottom of your baseboard & then simply crank up or down for focus - could also effect some tilt as well if you used a pan/tilt head as well.

Regards