Need help with Preplacing a Hasselblad Skin Piece on a 501CM

I lost a piece of skin on my Hasselblad 501CM while on an early morning nature outing. I am looking for leads on replacing this piece with an original "used" piece so the skin matches the skin on the camera.

Welcome to Photrio!

It looks as though your Hasselblad was skinned alive by the neck strap!

Use a thin sheet of paper, that has a "toothy" surface and cut a freehand section just a little larger than the pattern you need to fill.

Use a double sided piece of tape or two to locate your paper, roughly centered on the infill section and using a good, #2B pencil, make a light rubbing with the side of the graphite lead of your pencil, until you have a crisp sharp outline of the missing leather panel from which to build a replacement insert.

Nothing too hard or expensive, involved I this except, perhaps, the outlay of money for Pliobond 25 adhesive for laying it down.

Cheers

eli griggs said:

Use a thin sheet of paper, that has a "toothy" surface and cut a freehand section just a little larger than the pattern you need to fill.

Use a double sided piece of tape or two to locate your paper, roughly centered on the infill section and using a good, #2B pencil, make a light rubbing with the side of the graphite lead of your pencil, until you have a crisp sharp outline of the missing leather panel from which to build a replacement insert.

Nothing too hard or expensive, involved I this except, perhaps, the outlay of money for Pliobond 25 adhesive for laying it down.

Cheers

Click to expand...

Eli, Thank you for the instructions! Do you have any advice on how to find the material for the insert piece "leather panel"?

It's difficult because to get Hasselblad skin you have to go out into the wild and hunt down the rare Hasselope, and then you have to skin and tan it.

There are places that sell leatherette including pre-cut kits. I don't have any experience with them but two often mentioned are aki-asahi and cameraleather.

reddesert said:

It's difficult because to get Hasselblad skin you have to go out into the wild and hunt down the rare Hasselope, and then you have to skin and tan it.

There are places that sell leatherette including pre-cut kits. I don't have any experience with them but two often mentioned are aki-asahi and cameraleather.

Click to expand...

I reskinned my Minolta TLR with a Cameraleather kit and years later, I'm still happy with the results.
If you have an up-to-date, full size Circuit machine and access to the pattern for that camera, you can use it with some thin leather they have available, or perhaps vinyl, wood veneers, fabrics or papers.

Local "Michael's" give a good idea of what's available and in stock and there's plenty of others that carry many choices, online, etc.

If you have the patience, you can likewise make a full pattern that you can scan into a digital or analog file or simply for manual cutting replacement panels.

Good luck.