Every decision I made was with function in mind, but I couldn't help a little artistic flair. The wood and brass were stripped and gone over with about eight or nine coats of marine grade spar varnish. The bellows were reinforced with mesh and Pliobond. The leather was treated with Hubberd's Shoe Oil. The metal joints and holes (like at the shutter key and tension knob) are filled with machine oil. The top was reverse-mounted and has a mirror on the underside so it can be used like a regular SLR instead of having to look down onto the ground glass. All of the seams were sealed with high-temp waterproof sealant. Everything was gone over with a bunch of layers of carunaba wax as both a sacrificial layer and to seal any last spots. The magazines have an over-sized pull ring for use with firefighting gloves. The darkslides are cut down from larger-sized dark slides so that there is plenty of room to grip on top and a leather leash was attached in order to help yank out the darkslide if it got too difficult to remove and also to tether it to the camera so it wouldn't get lost.
Weight with one magazine is well over eight pounds. Pretty hefty, but not too bad when you consider that the weight of bunker when dry is over twenty-four pounds and twice that when wet. So far the camera has taken a direct hit from a firehose strong enough to knock it over (keep that weight in mind!) and countless glancing blows. All I've had to do is tip it over to dump the water out of the top area.