Elwood 5 x 7 w/cropping feature roller blinds

[GregW]

I picked up a nice clean 5 x 7 elwood yesterday. It has a set of polished metal roller blinds above the negative holder. They operate from a set of 8 knobs so you can crop a negative from above. The problem is they have been rolled back into the carriers too far and I can only get one out-there are 4. Anyone have a parts diagram for one of these that shows disassembly? There was an article in the 2001 edition of View Camera on restoring Elwoods, anyone with a copy that can check to see if the article covers this?
Thanks
greg

 

[GregW]

To answer my own question, with much fiddling and slipping white grease into the tracks, I was able to coax them all into working properly.

 

[ic-racer]

There is no mention of that negative holder in the 1947 Elwood manual on the cameraeccentric website. Can you post a picture of the negative holder?

 

[GregW]

Here are some pictures of mine. The negative carrier (not sure the purpose of the small round hole?)Mine needs new glass. It came with a recessed lens board. Someone added a filter slot. I'll need to get a regular lens board i think for a 210mm. Finally a picture of the cropping blinds. One of which has come loose from it's roller. Reattaching it will be interesting. maybe a rivet on each end? or drill and solder..?
greg

 

[ic-racer]

Thanks for posting. I think you will find the masking feature very useful if you use formats smaller than 5x7. You can buy some nice glass for the 5x7 carrier (from fpointinc, $42 and $25) and use it for all formats with the variable mask.

 

[GregW]

Thanks for that link. I've drilled the masking sheet and take up rod-it's hollow so i'll just pop rivet it. I've identified mine as a SP-2. Yes, the mask feature will come in handy when printing the various formats I shoot, no need to store a stack of odd sized carriers. According to this old ad the round hole in the negative carrier is a focusing spot? I suppose you would need a little sandwich of glass and a pattern negative the same thickness as your negative. Interesting focusing aid.
http://tinyurl.com/elwoods

 

[ic-racer]

A focusing spot can be handy. An 8x10 on ISO 100 film projected to 11x14 (1.4x enlargement) shot originally at f64 will not have any sharp grain to see and may not have any sharp image on the film when viewed with a 10x grain focuser. Therefore making focus of the enlarger challenging.

 

[GregW]

Indeed. I've ordered the glass from Focal point and requested a couple of 1" squares to set the focus spot up. This article from a 1949 magazine suggests a dried ink spot on clear film. Maybe, or more likely one of the focus targets found online printed on acetate.
http://tinyurl.com/p37ksfs

 

[ChuckP]

I have a copy of the 5x7 SP-25 parts list that shows a similar rolling mask system. PM me your email address and I'll send it to you.