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Thread: Salthill

  1. #21
    fishbulb's Avatar
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    Re: Salthill

    Sad thread. I know several people locally who have Salt Hill darkroom products - negative and print washers, etc. - that they cherish.
    -Adam

  2. #22

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    Re: Salthill

    Somewhere in the boxes from our move 4 years ago I have one or two of Joe’s exquisitely rare neckties. Wish I could find them again!

  3. #23
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Salthill

    The enlarger alignment device was basically just a simplified kit of mirrors which bounced the light between the respective neg and easel planes to extend the focal length of a dot going through a mirror hole, which showed successful alignment within a bulls-eye pattern. That kind of thing can be assembled to a far higher degree of precision if necessary using standard components from Edmund Scientific. There was nothing novel about it; just study up on optical collimators. But it was affordable, and way more accurate than something like a Zig-Align or ordinary levels. I once combined it with a high-end industrial laser beam to achieve a level of plane control ridiculously too precise to make any practical difference. I did this more to check out the characteristics of the laser itself, which I had borrowed, as well as a "what-if" fun experiment. I still have the Salthill device.

  4. #24

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    Re: Salthill

    Quote Originally Posted by Drew Wiley View Post
    The enlarger alignment device was basically just a simplified kit of mirrors which bounced the light between the respective neg and easel planes to extend the focal length of a dot going through a mirror hole, which showed successful alignment within a bulls-eye pattern. That kind of thing can be assembled to a far higher degree of precision if necessary using standard components from Edmund Scientific. There was nothing novel about it; just study up on optical collimators. But it was affordable, and way more accurate than something like a Zig-Align or ordinary levels. I once combined it with a high-end industrial laser beam to achieve a level of plane control ridiculously too precise to make any practical difference. I did this more to check out the characteristics of the laser itself, which I had borrowed, as well as a "what-if" fun experiment. I still have the Salthill device.
    This is trying to see how many elephants you can balance on the head of a pin.
    According to Bill Ziegler his mirror Zig Align was accurate to 1/5000”. According to LInhof they didn’t manufacture to that tight a tolerance.
    According to Bill he made his system to align his LInhof B cameras.

  5. #25
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Salthill

    The irony is that no commercial enlarger in existence was ever machined to tolerances worthy of fairly simple means of extreme calibration. But if you're designing a research telescope, your tolerances have to be way way tighter. Otherwise, I suspect there was a sizable dose of BS coefficient in Ziegler's claims. I still have a sample of the most accurate basic machinist-level/laser-pointer made during that era, and Zig-Align is a mere toy by comparison. But I ordinary just use a high quality machined level in conjunction with my tilting-mirror Peak Critical Magnifier to check if anything has gotten out of adjustment due to the latest earthquake or whatever. No typical paper easel is really all that flat either, especially if it's not vacuum design. But hunting a housefly with a 12ga shotgun can be fun, so I've calibrated machines various ways which amounted to overkill.
    And I actually have a pin-registered vac easel cannibalized from a very expensive 70's-vintage process camera, which has a diecast rim and machined surface; but it weighs around 400 lbs. But even with that, speaking in nitpicky thousandths would be nonsense.
    If someone want to go out, spend a ton of money for a ton of trued pink granite machinists surface to turn into an enlarging projection platform, then I can tell stories about instruments so sensitive even way back in the 70's, that if you even breathed on that slab of granite, the instrument would instantly measure the dimensional change of the slab due to the heat of your breath in millionths of an inch. Now they have machines that will draw a contour map of it in millionths, and yes, costing millions of dollars. We had a lot of fun back then, especially since one of my co-workers was the fellow that machined the optics for the Pioneer satellite projects and really knew his stuff.

  6. #26
    Eric Woodbury
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    Re: Salthill

    I have a dual mirror alignment tool for setup of a copy stand. Very nicely built. Elegant. I've never seen another like it. Hasselblad.

  7. #27

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    Re: Salthill

    Quote Originally Posted by Eric Woodbury View Post
    I have a dual mirror alignment tool for setup of a copy stand. Very nicely built. Elegant. I've never seen another like it. Hasselblad.
    LInhof had the same one less the bayonet lens mount.

  8. #28
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Salthill

    I looked at their slot washers, those of Zone VI, etc, don't remember if Gravity Works was in business yet, but came up with my own variation instead, which is more efficient in several respects, but holds about half as many sheets at a time. That is just one reasons it washes better. I don't like a lot of prints cramped in at the same time, and never print large quantities in any single session anyway. Besides, for about $80 worth of Plexiglas scraps back then, and an afternoon in the shop for each washer, I ended up saving an average of around $500 per washer. Just for personal use. I had no interest in trying to patent one more tweak.

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