Graflex Series B RB ground glass removal

[aconbere]

Hey all! Just got a little Graflex Series B RB and I’ve been working through cleaning it. The ground glass is dirty both sides and I wanted to confirm the process of removing the glass for cleaning.

I believe I need to remove these 4 screws and it will lift out.

The bottom two are tricky to get to though

 

[aconbere]

I filed down a crappy right angle ikea tool that was lying around and used that to remove the two tricky screws and was able to properly clean the glass and mirror. Glad I did because I bet I gained 1-2 stops of brightness!

But that does mean I had to reset the focus. I don’t have a ground glass for this type of back with which to check infinity but made do with cobbling something from an old 2x3 press camera.

Seating the ground glass itself was a total pain. Easy enough to set deeper into the well, but with no affordance to lift it out again. I was only able to get the glass dialed in by removing the lens and pushing the glass back up from the lens hole, then replacing the lens to check focus.

Very annoying, if anyone has recommendations for the future let me know.

- A