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Thread: Restoration of a Burke and James 5x7 Field Camera

  1. #1

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    Restoration of a Burke and James 5x7 Field Camera

    About 6 months ago I became interested in large format photography. I had been shooting medium format (6x4.5mm) for quite a while and liked it a lot. And although I don't consider 'bigger is better' as a universal truth, it seemed interesting to go for larger formats. Being very tight on a budget it was no option to walk into the European equivalent to B&H and ask for a brand new system.

    I ran into an online offer for a Burke & James 5x7 field camera. The price was low, which was explained by the fact that the bellows were probably better in letting light in than to keep it out. In the spur of the moment I decided to buy this baby and try to somehow make some bellows myself. By that time I also came across the article by Kevin Bourque on the resoration of his 8x10 Burke & James (see front page). This served as a great inspiration to show off the beautiful wood underneath the navy grey paint. During the process I made some pictures and I thought it might be useful to show them here...

    Since Kevin has produced an excellent article, I'll not try to repeat it here. I'm just gonna show some pictures with some very short description with them. For all the details for each step you better read Kevin's article. In total I'll post 7 steps. Please wait with replying until I'm finished, so it's easy to read everything.

    This first post shows some 'before' pictures. As can be seen, quite a lot of hopeless attempts were made to try to get the bellows light proof.

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    Dissembling

    First step is now to dissemble everything. Since eventually you will need to put everything together again, you need to remember how all the tiny little screws were placed. This means either making pictures or (like I did) make schematic drawings. Order all screws carefully.

    Don't forget to remember which parts were painted black and which gray. In the end you need to paint the inner part of the camera black again.

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    Remove the paint

    Next step is to remove the paint. The best way to do this is using some chemical paint remover. Since paint is quite nasty chemical substance by itself, you apparently need even more nasty substances to get it off! Therefore: wear the thickest pair of gloves you can find. I wore some regular rubber gloves the first time, but this paint remover was biting right through them.

    Very aggressive stuff. You put it on and you see it biting through the paint immediately. Use a scraper to get off the paint, without damaging the wood. Repeat this a couple of times to get off as much paint as you can.

    Did I already say you need very thick rubber gloves??

    On the pictures you can first see the result. In the second picture you can see how messy removing paint can be and you can also see the gloves that I finally used and actually prooved to be good enough. In the last picture you can see what I guess is the serial number of the camera.

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    Sanding, sanding, sanding

    Next step is to sand the wood to get rid of the last bit of paint. This needs to be done quite carefully and takes a lot of time. As suggested by Kevin I started with #80 and then I used #120 to finish it. Be careful not to sand off too much. This will change the shape too much and will make it harder to put everything together later. Looking back I went a bit too enthusiastic on some parts.

    But the result is well worth the effort. Look how beautiful the wood is. Who ever came with the idea to put gray paint on it!

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    Finishing the wood

    Next step is finishing the wood. As Kevin suggested I used cherry wood finisher for the job in two layers to darken the wood and to bring up the texture a bit better.

    Next I managed to find shellac. I never used it before, so it was kind of an adventure to use it for the first time. Since it's hard to find pure alcohol for a decent price (to dissolve the shellac), I decided to use Denatured alcohol. You do need to filter this to get rid of the dye. I did this by putting Activated carbon (you can get that in any aquarium shop) in a coffee filter and slowly pouring it in through the carbon. After a few runs the liquid has lost all its color. In the first picture you can see the original denatured alcohol with the bright blue color next to some denatured alcohol after the first filtering step. you can clearly see much of its color is lost already.

    Now you can dissolve the shellac in the denatured alcohol and wait a few days for it to dissolve. Next step is to apply the shellac in many very thin layers to the wood. I used a rubbing pad: a little piece of fabric with wadding inside. The wadding is soaked into the shellac and by rubbing the textile to the wood, a thin layer of shellac is applied. Thanks to the alcohol, the shellac hardens very quickly and it is possible to do many layers without having to wait too long. In the second picture you can see the dissolved shellac with the wadding which is about to be soaked. In the third pictures you can see how the shellac is applied.

    The result is very nice and shiny wood, as can be seen in the fourth picture. Besides shiny wood, you will also end up with a hell of a mess in the workshop; I gotta find some way to work more clean...

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    Polishing metal

    Meanwhile the paint is drying, you can start working on the metal bits. To get them shiny you take the finest steel wool you can get and just start rubbing. It's quite a lot of work to get every little part shiny again, but it's worth it. Not much to say here, just make sure you relax your arm once in a while, otherwise you won't be able to use it for another week.... .

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    Bellows and finishing

    Now it's time to make bellows. Of course it's possible to order new bellows somewhere online, but since I was on a budget I wanted to try it myself. In the end the process of making bellows is not very complicated. The hardest part is to find suitable materials (without paying a lot). The challenge is to find light proof material which is very, very thin. Thicker material will mean it is not possible to fold the bellows enough.

    In the end I didn't manage to find really thin material. As will be described I used several layers and ended up with quite thick bellows and it is therefore not possible to fold the camera. However, I never made bellows before and I really do like the way they look. Furthermore they are very light proof and thanks to the materials I used they are also very, very strong. I may remake the bellows one day, but right now I am more than happy they keep the light out and I can do the movements I want.

    I basically based my bellow-making on the PDF provided on this website: Link The only difference is that in this description some special kind of material is used.

    I started with a light proof fabric which is used to darken out curtains (a few euros for two meters). The problem is this material is only sold with a white color. I first tried to dye it black, but it didn't work out: the fabric only turned into some kind of gray shade. Therefore I decided to cover this fabric with the thinnest black fabric I could find. Note that this fabric is needed at both sides: at the inside to prevent reflections and at the outside to have nice looking bellows.

    I carefully measured the old bellows and based on this I could make a wooden 'flat top pyramid' template. It was surprisingly big for this type of camera: almost a meter high. Next I glued the black fabric to one side of the light proof fabric. Prepare to use a lot of glue! I first bought some glue for fabric, but it only comes in small amounts. So I decided to change to some general glue ('Bisonkit' in Dutch), which worked really well.

    Then I cut out the ribs from relatively thick paper and glued them to the other side of the light proof fabric. Note that you need two different patterns for the ribs as described in the PDF. Subsequently I could cover this side with black fabric as well.

    The result does look nice, but it is a very 'rigid' material. Therefore it was pretty hard to fold the bellows. It took me hours to push the bellows into the right folds. I also used paper which was a bit too thick, which increased the size of the bellows even more. I pressed the bellows together for a few days, hoping the folded size would descrease a bit, but it was not a much as I hoped for.

    Therefore I ended up with quite thick, but good looking and very strong bellows. I decided to use them and not go for a second run with thinner materials. As long as I don't get too tired of carrying a non fold-able field camera around, it is still fine. I did make pictures during the process of making the bellows, but I managed to push some delete buttons when I was not supposed to do that. I know, I should have made analog pictures: you don't loose negatives that easy :-). If I do manage to find those pictures, I will post them later. Luckily the pictures from the PDF are very good and can give you a good picture. You only need to think bigger when making a LF cam.... ;-)


    Finally it is time to assemble everything again. Grab the photos or drawings you made in the beginning and put all the shiny part together. Then it's time to get yourself a lense and film holders and you are ready to shoot!

    I hoped you liked watching and reading this little reconstruction. Any comments and questions are welcome. Thanks for watching!

  8. #8
    Vaughn's Avatar
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    Re: Restoration of a Burke and James 5x7 Field Camera

    Beautiful job, Gonzo. I bought the same model off of a person here, thinking I was getting a user camera, but it is, unfortunately, not usable without lots of work. The bellows are light tight, though, and no longer smell like strong tobacco.

    I read your story with my beast next to me -- which was a nice way to do it. Unfortunately, I have little enough time to photograph and print (and raising three 12 year old boys), so spending much time on camera restoration is not an option I will take (especially I have a fine working Zone VI 8x10 -- I was just hoping to work occasionally in 5x7). I might take a loss and sell it to someone who has the desire to follow your footsteps...and fall back on my Kodak 2D (8x10) that has a 5x7 back, though I was hoping for a lighter smaller kit -- one of the reasons I got the B&J.

    Again, thank you for a fine posting about your work on the camera!

  9. #9

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    Re: Restoration of a Burke and James 5x7 Field Camera

    Excellent job at refurbishing your B&J 5x7, I find it odd that the denatured alcohol you
    used had a blue tint to it, I guess it's a indicator of some sort to warn that it's poisonous ?
    Here in the US denatured is water clear, the blue tint would wreak havoc with shellac, green
    shellac anyone ? Nice trick in using activated charcoal to remove the dye !

    The technique you used to apply the shellac is called 'French Polish' I'm going to do that
    on the Kodak 8x10 2D I have since the finish seems to be shellac rather than lacquer or varnish.

  10. #10

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    Re: Restoration of a Burke and James 5x7 Field Camera

    Thanks for your replies

    Jim: denatured alcohol is indeed dyed to indicate that it is poisonous. They also add a aroma compound which I really wished was not there. It makes you feel pretty high after filtering the stuff... But it's worth the effort, because it's so much cheaper than buying pure alcohol.

    And I would definitely recommend the french polishing technique! It leads to very nice results and is very easy to do.

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