Re: Square bellows?
Richard Knoppow (dickburk@ix.netcom.com)
Sat, 22 Nov 1997 00:50:37 -0800
At 01:52 PM 11/20/97 -0500, Bob Szabo wrote:
>Ive read a lot of great info about bellows from all the info here my thanks
>to all who have contributed. However my interest is in wetplate cameras and
>would like to make square bellows. Were they folded differently. Is there a
>source for pre 1880 style bellows making? I have not examined a lot of
>originals but understand that not only do they not taper but the corners are
>different too. Am I correct in this? Any help will be appreciated.
>
>
>
>Best Regards,
>
>Bob Szabo
>rjs@cwreenactors.com
>Civil War Photography
>http://www.cwreenactors.com/collodion
>
>
As I mentioned in an earlier post there are definitely two methods of
folding bellows. Many older large format cameras and seemingly all
Deardorf cameras have right angle corners rather than the truncated corners
usually found now. The only reference to this kind of bellows is in a very
old book: _The Book of Photography_ Paul N. Hasluck, 1907, London, Cassell
and Company, which has a short section on making bellows. I am partly
guessing but it appears that this kind of bellows is folded out of a
continuous piece of lined leather without stiffeners. The truncated corner
bellows have stips of stiffener, often a thick manila card stock, in
between the inner and outer covering. I don't have a camera with the
square corners to examine to be sure of how its made. It is difficult to
believe that a large bellows could be stiff enough without some sort of
reinforcement inside. Someone out there must have a Deardorf or other
camera with the right sort of bellows they can look at.
BTW two web sites with bellows making instructions
are:http://home.sn.no/~gjon/ This has instructions for building view
cameras from scratch and has a link to:
http://users.cyberbeach.net/~dbardell/bellows.html which has some
instructions for making bellows.
----
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles,Ca.
dickburk@ix.netcom.com