B&J 8X10 improvements

Here are a couple of shots of mods to the 8x10 B&J beast. Lens shade was made from an old enlarger bellows. 4x5 reducing back made from an old Graflok back. Lens board for the 300mm symmar-s. Lens boards made out of mesquite wood. Jim Galli's 240mm G-Claron, mounted in an adaptor board for 4x5 or 8x10. tim

Good job. The lens boards are beautiful!

Nice. What did you use for the base of the 4x5 reducing back? Is it built up out of sticks or plywood or...????

BradS said:

Nice. What did you use for the base of the 4x5 reducing back? Is it built up out of sticks or plywood or...????

Click to expand...

I'm interested in that too. The Seattle guys are working on my 8x10 next week (Hi schwin) and I need to McGuyver a 4x5 back. Maybe I can get clever and somehow use a 6x12 on the same board somehow.

The base was "borrowed" from the back that came with with the camera originally. It shipped without an 8x10 back, but I found one from someone who had chopped up an 8x10 to change formats. It is a solid maple or birch B&J back (battleship gray) which had a rather strange sliding barn door polaroid-ground glass invention attached, which could be used for proofing. I didn't need it, but decided that the original back could work with a 4x5 back in place. Made a spacer out of 1/2" material to reduce the opening size and mount the Graflok back in place. Only problem I have is that to go from 8x10 down to 4x5 requires a little focusing due to the difference in set-back, not a major inconvenience. I think I may have used 1/2" MDF, but don't remember. It's painted, so I'm not sure. tim

Checked back on my notes. The spacer part which connects the B&J back to the Graflok back is actually 1/2" Baltic Birch (not really 1/2" but more likely 12mm). This is the stuff I used to build drawer boxes out of, before d-sel white pine made drawers too expensive to bid jobs with. tim