Lester Hawksby
Allowing Ads
Hope this is OK, it's my first post here as a friend recommended that this would be a good place to look for someone who might be interested.
I'm looking for a home for a LARGE all-aluminium monorail camera. It consists of a ~60cm aluminium rail on which three sturdy trucks move up and down carrying the standards. The trucks have handles both sides that are geared to a fine-toothed chromed brass rack, so can be moved precisely even with quite a large weight on them. Each standard can slide in two directions and rotate in two directions, locked by knurled knobs. The back can be rotated. All in, it is a lot of movements!
There is no brand or mark on it anywhere that I can see. It gives me a faint impression of having been made by an individual machinist rather than a factory (the only things that might be castings are the "trucks").
Frankly this is a bit of a project. When I got it it was quite dirty, bare aluminium surfaces were corroded matt, painted surfaces were a thick greenbeige hammerite that I really hated. So I resolved to paintstrip it, polish up the slides and pivots, repaint it black and put it all back together. In actual practice I have done nearly all the stripping and polishing and primed some parts with a red oxide primer that has bonded really well and made a good base, but when I tried the gloss black metal paint I'd bought on a few surfaces, it didn't give a nice finish so I put the project aside for about ten years. I now have a quite different lifestyle and interests and no realistic prospect of using this, which puts me off going back to it.
I am unsure if the middle standard, which is about the right size for 5x7, is just intended to support the bellows in the middle - or if there was some intent to unclip the bellows and be able to put a 5x7 back on. It certainly wouldn't be hard if you're handy enough to finish this camera.
I do not have bellows for it (it came with VERY decayed ones which I had hoped to be able to measure to base a replacement on, but they were too far gone). There is a crack in the focusing screen from end to end, but it's usable as is and not that hard to replace. It had lots of fibre washers (on all the locking knobs) which had decayed and will need replacing. I believe it is otherwise complete.
I believe I have a 10x8 double darkslide somewhere which I will include if I can find. I will include a pack of expired 10x8 Tmax 100 which I believe is still basically OK. I do not have a lens that will cover 10x8 with room for all these amazing movements, nor do I have a shutter, but I do have a box of old large shutterless lenses and am happy to dig through it and see if there's one you can try - if wanted.
I am happy to offer a bit of help to get it back together and working - I have a pretty wide range of skills and access (one way or another) to some decent tools but frankly I don't think they will be needed - it's mostly a job for elbow grease. I do nowadays have the capacity to punch custom-sized fibre or leather washers to replace the rotted ones and am prepared to do this if we can't find off the shelf replacements - I offer this specifically because this was a problem back when I was first trying to sort this camera out.
COLLECTION ONLY from Dalston, London N16, UK.
I have put this in here because I really don't expect cash for this - it is FREE to a good home.
(Will come back and add pictures as soon as I can make picture attachment work.) - EDIT - pictures added, both of the camera as a pile of parts and of partial reassembly.
I'm looking for a home for a LARGE all-aluminium monorail camera. It consists of a ~60cm aluminium rail on which three sturdy trucks move up and down carrying the standards. The trucks have handles both sides that are geared to a fine-toothed chromed brass rack, so can be moved precisely even with quite a large weight on them. Each standard can slide in two directions and rotate in two directions, locked by knurled knobs. The back can be rotated. All in, it is a lot of movements!
There is no brand or mark on it anywhere that I can see. It gives me a faint impression of having been made by an individual machinist rather than a factory (the only things that might be castings are the "trucks").
Frankly this is a bit of a project. When I got it it was quite dirty, bare aluminium surfaces were corroded matt, painted surfaces were a thick greenbeige hammerite that I really hated. So I resolved to paintstrip it, polish up the slides and pivots, repaint it black and put it all back together. In actual practice I have done nearly all the stripping and polishing and primed some parts with a red oxide primer that has bonded really well and made a good base, but when I tried the gloss black metal paint I'd bought on a few surfaces, it didn't give a nice finish so I put the project aside for about ten years. I now have a quite different lifestyle and interests and no realistic prospect of using this, which puts me off going back to it.
I am unsure if the middle standard, which is about the right size for 5x7, is just intended to support the bellows in the middle - or if there was some intent to unclip the bellows and be able to put a 5x7 back on. It certainly wouldn't be hard if you're handy enough to finish this camera.
I do not have bellows for it (it came with VERY decayed ones which I had hoped to be able to measure to base a replacement on, but they were too far gone). There is a crack in the focusing screen from end to end, but it's usable as is and not that hard to replace. It had lots of fibre washers (on all the locking knobs) which had decayed and will need replacing. I believe it is otherwise complete.
I believe I have a 10x8 double darkslide somewhere which I will include if I can find. I will include a pack of expired 10x8 Tmax 100 which I believe is still basically OK. I do not have a lens that will cover 10x8 with room for all these amazing movements, nor do I have a shutter, but I do have a box of old large shutterless lenses and am happy to dig through it and see if there's one you can try - if wanted.
I am happy to offer a bit of help to get it back together and working - I have a pretty wide range of skills and access (one way or another) to some decent tools but frankly I don't think they will be needed - it's mostly a job for elbow grease. I do nowadays have the capacity to punch custom-sized fibre or leather washers to replace the rotted ones and am prepared to do this if we can't find off the shelf replacements - I offer this specifically because this was a problem back when I was first trying to sort this camera out.
COLLECTION ONLY from Dalston, London N16, UK.
I have put this in here because I really don't expect cash for this - it is FREE to a good home.
(Will come back and add pictures as soon as I can make picture attachment work.) - EDIT - pictures added, both of the camera as a pile of parts and of partial reassembly.