These are still made - I think you can buy them from Silverprint in London
(look on their web site) but they are expensive.
I made my own - primitive, but effective - when I had a spare hour. Not
quite as nice, but it does have a two part back so you can remove half and
look at the print. Slower to work with as I use a couple of wing-nuts to
hold each half in place.
The basic frame is simply two layers of four bits of wood cut square. One
set are slightly shorter to give a lip to hold the glass. The two layers
are placed together so the joins are staggered at the corners and a couple
of nails at each corner hold the whole thing together.
(Incidentally this can also be done to make frames, rather than trying 45
degree cuts - and you then don't need any special shaped wood sections)
The wing nuts go onto things that have a thread for them one end and a
wood screw the other which I went into a hardware shop and described! This
was all I had to buy and I think cost me around 40p - all the rest was
stuff I had lying around. Plywood or similar with a sheet of vinyl stuck
onto it for the back, strips of wood with blocks on them across between
the wing nuts to hold the back in place - and a sheet of plate glass.
For prints up to around A4 you can use a modern contact printer designed
for ordinary negative proofing - some are made with just plain glass. If
you tape the neg to the paper along one edge you can undo the frame and
lift up and edge without losing register. However I think these frames
cost around 35 pounds now.
And the cheapest method - just a couple of large sheets of plate glass,
put the paper and neg on top of one (taped together as above) and then put
the second sheet on top. The weight is usually enough to give good
contact, but for small glass sheets I use a couple of large office clips
at each end.
Peter Marshall
On Fixing Shadows and elsewhere:
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~ds8s
Family Pictures, German Indications, London demonstrations &
The Buildings of London etc: http://www.spelthorne.ac.uk/pm/