[pure-silver] Re: Elwood 5x7?


----- Original Message ----- From: "Nick Zentena" <zentena@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 5:39 PM
Subject: [pure-silver] Re: Elwood 5x7?


On Thursday 21 July 2005 20:02, Richard Knoppow wrote:


   Are the glass pieces large enough to be from negative
holders? Same for the metal pieces. Could they be masks?
AFAIK, these are not original parts of the enlarger.

Some of the metal parts are clearly lens holders of some sort. The other
pieces I can only think are some sort of spacers. Too big for any place but
inside the head. It came with some masks for the 5x7 glass holder but those
are in addition to the small pieces of glass.

Do you have the tapered ground glass for the lamp house,
its the only non standard part there. The layers in the

There is a piece of ground glass. It's got a crack on one side which was
fixed with duct tape. I'm guessing that's not the best choice.


Thanks
Nick

Again, I recommend downloading the patent. The lamphouse came with a sheet of graduated ground glass, dense in the center and tapering to nearly clear at the edges. According to the catalogue it wa made by snand blasting. In addition to this there should be one or more sheets of plain ground glass. Some enlargers had as many as five sheets of plain ground glass to get the illumination uniform. Late enlargers also have a sheet of heat absorbing glass.
Plain ground glass is available from several sources but the graduated glass is hard to find. I suppose one could make a a sheet by selective grinding using a fairly coarse grit. The other choice is to replace the lamphouse with an Arista cold light head, but that is expensive.
The features included in the enlarger varied with the age. Late enlargers have built in roller-blind type masks above the negative. Some earlier ones have plain flat masks that slide in and out. Beginning at some fairly early time a built in red filter was included. This is loacated in the front standard just above the lens and is operated by a small lever sticking out the side.
There were evidently several revisions of the lamphouse including its shape. I think Elwood was aware that the lamphouse as originally designed did not live up to its intensions as far as uniformity of illumination. Very late lamhouses have vacuum deposited aluminum mirrors instead of the earlier silvered ones. The aluminum is very resistant to oxidation, the silver depends on a protective coating. New style lamphouses could be refitted onto old chassis so that the style of lamphouse is not, in itself, an absolute criterion for dating.
Your enlarger probably has a counter weight on a cable. This runs down the back of the column. Later enlargers used tape type springs. The counterweight has the advantage that it does not age.
My oldest Elwood catalogue is from the late 1930's, the others are post war. By the late thirties the enlarger was made entirely of metal rather than the wooden chassis of the original model.
Probably there is an Elwood guru somewhere with parts and knowledge of how to fix the things. They were made in enormous numbers and over a long period so one would think there is a trove of parts somewhere.

---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

=============================================================================================================
To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your 
account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) 
and unsubscribe from there.

Other related posts: