Used bogen easel functionality

[psychorobotape]

Hey guys, I'm finishing up putting my darkroom together and just bought a used bogen 11x14 two blade easel on ebay. Upon examining it i noticed that the blades exhibit a slight warp in that they don't sit flush against the paper. The ends of the blades are about 1/4" above the paper. There may even be a slight "bowing" to the vertical blade. Is this normal? Should I try to bend them back? It seems like this would affect the borders of the image. Am I being paranoid?

 

[glbeas]

If you can manage it, bow them gently back, bowing them a bit past where you want and letting it flex back straight. The blade should be there to hold the paper down flat if it has any curl so that bow will cause focus problems in that case. Be careful to avoid making any kinks, these will be doubly hard to remove.

 

[Nick Zentena]

Are they square?

 

[pentaxuser]

I hope the suggestions you receive will fix it. You have my sympathy. What gets me about e-bay is that the seller must have known about this. You can hardly miss noticing that a blade is a quarter inch above the paper and yet he/she, it appears, has said nothing. Sellers should be required to make an accurate description of the item including defects.

If the seller was a business on main street in the U.K. then you would have case against him/her under the Sale of Goods Act which states that an article must be fit for purpose. I imagine there is similar law in the U.S.

If he/she is a regular seller then surely he/ she is a business and should be covered by suchg a law. My impression based on numerous threads about e-bay from N American members on APUG is that is e-bay purchases seem little better than a luck dip lottery in terms of getting redress if you pull the rattlesnake out.

Nevertheless I'd take it up with the seller and then e-bay if you get no satisfaction.


pentaxuser