It has been a while since I posted here. More than 3 years. The group has by and large disbanded. I am still in touch with one member of the original Seattle Cameramakers. Work got in the way. Now, more time is becoming available. In the time since I last posted, my ground glass focusing screen for the 11x14 Korona broke on the way to a Seattle Camera Collectors Society meeting. The search for a replacement proved fruitless, so I went down a very deep rabbit hole learning to make ground glass. Once that was successful, I started making screens for the planet and selling them on eBay. Now after nearly reaching the end of that journey, there is a complete system for making ground glass focusing screens at Young Camera Company. Refinements are still being made, but the entire process is now streamlined and efficient. We start with plain un-tempered soda lime float glass the same as people used to use for windows in buildings. It took over a year of experimentation to develop a good method of efficiently grinding the glass. Now we pay a neighbor to grind it in sheets 18x18 inches. The cutting is then done on a very high quality commercial glass cutter. We added a digital scale to this glass cutter to enable cutting glass to within ,005 inch. We sold nearly 200 screens of plain glass. Then we used the proceeds to purchase a laser engraving machine. This machine is used to engrave grid lines on the glass to aid the photographer in composition. Now we are adding fresnel lenses to all screens up to 8x10 inch. So, that diversion of my energies is now nearing the point where it is simple fast and efficient. We started the website youngcameracompany.com which was also a long learning curve. Having overcome all of that. I am finally back to working on the camera I have been building since 1978. We will see what happens.
