Kodak 2D mystery spring

[Jim C.]

I've been slowly restoring a couple of Kodak 2D's and while I was stripping the old finish off the 5X7 back I noticed there were two flat 'M' ( or 'W' depending on orientation ) shaped springs in the inside grooves in front of where the film holder goes, held in by one tiny brad. The grooves seem to paired to either landscape or portrait, meaning there are 2 for each position and are in front of each other. I managed to pull one of the brads out by tapping it out with a T pin since the brads point was ground flat so it was easy to locate, not so for the other one.
Does any one have an idea what originally was supposed to be in that groove ?

[wfwhitaker]

Those springs were there to hold in place "splitters". They are boards which would allow shooting of half the format at one time, e.g., two 3 1/2 x 5 images on one sheet of 5x7 film.

[Jim C.]

wfwhitaker, thanks for the quick answer, and it makes sense since the 2D backs are
easy to remove to put a mask in.

[Steve Hamley]

And here's a bad jpeg of what they look like.

Cheers, Steve

[Jim C.]

Steve, you read my mind, I was wondering what they looked like, thanks !

[Ken Lee]

When I bought my old 5x7 2A at an auction, it had a splitter. The original owner, I surmised, did portraits: the splitter allowed you to make 2 vertical shots in quick succession. I left the splitter with Richard Ritter, when he installed a new bellows on the camera.

The lens was a barrel-mounted 190mm Bausch&Lomb Tessar. I thought it was junk... until I started using it.

[Steve Hamley]

That's correct. The "short" one allows two 5x8s on a sheet of 8x10, the longer one two 4x10s. You can also use both together and get four 4x5,s, but using divider is sort of a pain, using two is almost above and beyond the call of duty.

BTW, both have the circular depressions in them, they're where your fingers go so you can depress the springs to remove the dividers.

Cheers, Steve