Need a little help with the Toyo 8x10 Field Camera

[removed-user-1]

So, the school where I teach has a wonderful metal field camera, a Toyo 810MII. It was just purchased last fall, so it's practically new, probably fewer than 20 negatives made with it so far. It sat unused over the summer, after having been used by several students last spring. I brought it home this weekend to do some personal work, and when I opened it up, I discovered that the last time it was used, it was folded up rather carelessly. So it sat all summer with a portion of the tapered bellows near the lens standard all crinkled up, bent out of shape. Now it won't really nest the way it should. It looks awful but more importantly it seems to get in the image a bit.

I've run the bellows out as far as it will go, and have the camera on a tripod opened up. I gently tried to pull the folds back into their proper positions, with a little success. Now it's somewhat better, but it's not perfect. Anybody got some suggestions on straightening a bellows? It annoys me because the camera is almost perfectly new, somebody just wasn't careful with it.

Anyway thanks for any tips.

 

[mcd]

You might have better luck taking the bellows off and working on the folds. The bellows is held in by sliding metal clips on the film and the lens standards. It could also be flipped over. I know with my camera, the bellows does sag a bit if you extend the rail out very far, but a lot of cameras suffer from this. You can get a new bellows as a worst case scenario...