Post 21. Making the front bellows v2

 Well, I tried and tried glues, and rib materials, and ways to lay out he bellows and cut the ribs, and I might just as well scrap the last post and start over, because the sheer size of the thing throws wrenches in at every turn:

     1. Drawing on the fabric doesn't work because it is hard to keep it stretched perfectly even, and if it gets loose or stretches a little, that throws the whole drawing off and distorts the lines.

    2. Solvent based fabric glues were recommended by Google AI, and would be good for a small bellows, but it would take too many tubes for one that size, and the nozzle on the tube is too small.  Water based Acrylic glues like Modge Podge can be brushed on, but make the regular paper based poster board ribs bend, and they don't dry flat. Talas lay Flat bookbinding glue(similatrto Yes Paste) works, but it dries brittle and causes problems in the folds. Tacky Glue is not strong enough.  Neither is rubber cement. Contact cement has unhealthy fumes and doesn't allow repositioning. 

    3.  It seems that such a large bellows would require heavy rib material, so I tried a thicker board I had. But then the ribs have to be spaced quite far apart for the bellows to fold, and add to the whole unit thickness. 

    4.  Most of the poster boards available these days are a lot thinner and flimsier than they used to be, more like thick paper.   I found at the Dollar Tree a cheap poster board that is reasonably stiff, and seems plastic coated or impregnated. One side is actually almost waxy.  The good thing though is that the water based acrylic glues don't make it buckle.   However, adhesion is just OK, not great and the fabric can be peeled off.  Roughing it up with a light sanding does helps it stick well enough, so pairing it with Modge Podge is a viable option.

   5.  The ribs have to be held in place and positioned for gluing with strips of tape to maintain the spacing:

  There are two ways to cut the ribs:

        a. Draw the whole side of the bellows on the poster bard, draw the spaces between ribs and cut them out leaving spacer tabs to be removed after the tape strips are in place.  To that effect, I made a double bladed cutter with a 2.5mm spacing:

    The problem I ran into is that the blade that is pressed against the straight edge bends in, and the width of the cut ends up uneven and less than desired. That could be avoided by extending the aluminum spacer all the way to a point between the two blade tips. But it is also almost impossible to keep the ribs even in width.

     b. Cut a bunch of plain strips on a jig that will provide consistant precise widths, cut he ends at the proper angle on another jig, and assemble them on top of a template of the full bellows side, taping them together as they are lined up.  It seems at this point this may be the easiest and more accurate way.

   I glued together the test corner shown above, brushing Modge Podge on the fabric for half of it, and on the ribs for the other half.  The ribs are pressed down with a steel roller. When the glued is applied to the fabric, it oozes out between the ribs, gets on the roller and makes a mess that has to be wiped off, so it is better to brush the glue on the ribs one at a time.  But the white glue doesn't show on the white poster board background, which makes it easy to miss spots, so either the glue or the poster board should be colored.  The inside fabric panel was glued using 3M #77 Spray Adhesive sprayed on the ribs.  The corner test was then folded and placed under pressure overnight. I am quite pleased with the result, the corner folds are clean, and the ribs are stiff enough:

   So here is how I will proceed:

      1. Draw a perfect zigzag pattern of 25 x 35.5mm folds on the computer.  That 35.5mm figure was chosen to get the width of each group of 2 successive ribs as close as possible to the 50mm I had settled on.

   Print it on poster board, and cut it out to use as a template. 

     2. Draw a bellows side tapered from 55cm to 20cm on two pieces of poster board taped together, and use the cut out template to draw the side zigzag lines as precisely as possible, flipping it over . Draw the fold lines as precisely as possible between the points of the zigzag. The total length of the bellows came out to be 1244mm, just 6mm shy of the original plan of  50mm x 25 = 1250mm. So the folds widths are going to be just a hair shy of the 21.5mm and 28.5mm I had originally calculated.  

    Then I realized that for the white ribs to show against the template, it needed to be colored, so I redrew it on green poster board:

     3.  Cut the ribs 1" and 3/4" wide, cut the ends to fit with a 3mm gap for folding the corners, and tape them to the template 3mm apart:

     4.  Use 3 strips of tape to hold the ribs together:

    5.  Glue the ribs down. That is where I had to change course, the colored Modge Podge I used for the first three ribs making a mess, bucking the card tock and oozing between ribs. The glue got all over the roller pressing the ribs down and I had to wipe the excess with paper towels. 

   So I used the 3M #77 spray adhesive instead, using as a mask the zigzag patterns and pieces of scrap poster board, and gluing the whole side in 3 sections to make sure the adhesive wouldn't dry and remain aggressively tacky:

    The second and third sides required some minor adjustments to keep the zigzag spacing sufficiently even. 

    The remaining 1/2 sides were done in on piece on the same green template with an added 1"strip in the middle, and then cut in half. 

     I first intended to overlap the poster board ribs, but decided to butt the ends instead, leaving a 1" strip of fabric on opposite sides front and back to attach them together.  

    In order to do that and form a cone, I built a makeshift stand out of three scraps of plywood to hold the bellow shape up.  That also made it easier to fold the bellows because the large cone was supported:

      Here is the finished bellows partly extended:

        After putting it under weights to flatten it out and set the folds, it compressed to less than 1":

Post 20. Making the front bellows

   After looking at a lot of posts, tutorials and videos about making bellows, and making the set of straight bellows by myself, I feel I understand the principles well enough now to make them my own way. The best tutorial I found is here, and I will more or less follow it:

https://www.picto.info/RS_texts/bellows_RS.pdf

  I went ahead and ordered 3 yards of a blackout liner fabric for curtains that is fairly heavy, black on one side and light silver grey on the other, and 56" wide. I will make the front bellows the traditional way in  three layers with cardstock stiffeners sandwiched between the curtain liner and a black coton fabric I already have. The front bellows is tapered from 22"to 9", and must extend about 24". So the ribs have to be unequal in width to produce that 13" taper. In order to calculate the dimensions precisely, I will use millimeters instead of inches, and make a bellows that tapers from 550 mm to 200mm, with a total extension of about 750mm. The fabric panel for each side of the bellows need to be somewhere around 750 x 1.7 = 1275mm. The ribs on the straight bellow I mad were 1", so we want our ribs to be on average around 25mm, except that we need unequal ribs. So we will need around 50 fold for 25 ribs. Each side panel must taper a total of 175mm over 25 ribs, so the difference between the wider and the narrower fold needs to be 175/25 = 7mm, making the narrower one 25mm -3.5mm = 21.5mm and the wider one 25mm + 3.3mm = 28.5mm. Since there needs to be a space between the cardstock stiffeners so the bellows can fold , we could cut those stiffener ribs 21mm and 28 mm, leaving exactly 1mm of space between them for the folds. The total length will be 50mm x 25 = 1250mm. The entire set of top, sides and 1/2 bottoms will be drawn right on the grey side of the black out fabric stretched flat on a board(disregard the dimension on the sketch bellow):

  Here is a preliminary scale layout of one panel in inches:

 

    Actually, there are two ways to go: 

        1. Make all the ribs pointed following the zigzag folding pattern and glue them all. In that case, the two bottom halves need to be glue together overlapping about an inch, making a cone shaped unit that will need to be carefully folded making the bellows. Either the ribs will be made of two halves side by side(weak point), or overlapped (then there is a double thickness in the middle of the bottom).

        2. Cut the ribs for the side panels without the points, which allows using a plywood shape to glue the fabric panels together before gluing the ribs, and making a square tube instead of a round conical unit, which will have a stronger bottom panel and will be easier to fold, but will possibly have weaker soft corners, since the ribs on the sides don't have points.

    Different makers have used different glues: brushed on contact cement, acrylic, 3M Spray adhesive, etc... I would rather stay away from spray adhesive as my experience has been that the stuff will come loose 5-10 years down the road. I don't want to use contact cement either, as it will in places bleed through the fabric and make a mess. And then it may eventually come loose. Plus the ribs have to be spaced perfectly lined up with the drawing 1mm apart, and repositioning is not possible with it. My choice would be Yes paste, but it remains water soluble. There are several fabric glues on the market that I will try, as well as tacky glue, Modge Podge, Acrylic Gel Medium, and my old acid free PVA bookbinding glue. I will just have to do test patches with a few ribs.

 

Post 19. Update

     Well, I keep roaming the internet for information and ran across a wonderful web site created by a guy from Slovenia who has built a business pouring and selling his own home made silver gelatin "Zebra" dry plates. He is very thorough in his explanations and in his videos and blogs. He pours his plates using a syringe, which seems a lot easier than the traditional method.  He also has developed a way to produce better and lighter Tintypes and Ambrotypes on black glass by adding Potassium Thiocyanate to the developer. I definitely want to try that. 

https://zebradryplates.com/

   Randy came by for a while this afternoon and I updated him on what I had learned about silver nitrate bath maintenance, pouring plates, etc... We checked the density, and it was way  off the 1.07 mark, all the way in the 1.4's. The pH was also way off at 5.5, which could explain the fogging. We also noticed a deposit at the bottom of the jar that looked like silver precipitate, same stuff that I found at the bottom of the failed sensitizing tank.  Randy practiced pouring some plates with a syringe and a mixture of water, gelatin and watercolorI concocted to practice with without wasting expensive and smelly collodion. He found it easier, if still tricky. My thumb is in such bad shape right now that I cannot do much.

Post 18. Planning the next test session

    Google says a liter of 9% silver nitrate bath can sensitize over two hundred 5x7 plates. And it can be sunned or boiled to remove contaminants,  replenished with silver nitrate crystals, and the pH adjusted with nitric acid.

  Unfortunately, I lost half of the silver nitrate since Sunday. There was a leak in the tank, and the silver nitrate seems to have oozed out first, eaten up the silicone aquarium glue and even seem to have warped the plexiglas... I understand now why the few tanks offered for sale are expensive and built literally "like a tank"!

   I will dismantle it, reassemble it with an acrylic, cyanocrilate or epoxy glue, and encase it in a tight wooden box with a fitted lid and latches as the one above. In the meantime, we will just have to sensitize the next plates in a tray using the half liter I have left. 

   I asked Google some silver nitrate bath questions, and got answers, and follow up questions answers. The jest of it is that to get consistant results, the silver nitrate bath needs to be often checked and maintained so the density for a 9% solution is 1.07 and the pH remains acidic at 4 for ambrotypes, keeping the temperature between 65 and 72. The plates will sensitize faster if the temperature is higher, with a base time around 3 minutes. Over sensitizing can cause fogging, as can a pH above 5. However, lower pH's decrease sensitivity. The level of iodides is also critical to sensitivity, and should remain near saturation level for optimal sensitivity. Higher levels increase grain size. Iodide is primarily sensitive to blue and UV. Adding bromide in  40/60 ratio extends sensitivity into the green range, which is better for portraiture, but with lower speed. Workflow has to get faster as temperatures rise.

   I ordered both vinyl and nitrile black gloves, some 5x7  replacement glass for picture frames, a lab hydrometer kit to test the density of the silver nitrate bath, and three 500ml amber bottles. I already have a thermometer.

  Now, the problem with the lack of contrast. Well, the wet collodion Ambrotype process is inherently low contrast on purpose, the plates are underexposed and underdeveloped so a weak negative can appear like a positive when placed in front of a black background. We will have to find the right combination of exposure and development time, and that is a bit of an art more than a precise thing. According to some "experts", development time should be cut to 15 or 10 seconds if the image is overexposed and appears too fast, and extended up to 20 seconds or so if the image is slow appearing.

   I am concerned my model set up in the dining room may let in too much outside light and might be fogging the plates a little, so I moved everything upstairs to a dark attic room. 

   Another possible source of fogging actually may simply be the safelight. I have used it for years processing black and white paper, but who knows. So we will have to do a fogging test. 

   The more pictures I look at and collect from Pinterest though, the more I am leaning towards rough altered images, double exposures, with blurred areas, hand writing, scribbles scratches and blemishes, even painting on them, adding color, gold or silver leaf, collaged paper. In other words a very long way from picture perfect Hollywood portraits... 

I like these very  much:

     I also have always had a fondness for vintage mugshots:

   But then that is what I personally like. Once the camera is built and set up, my partner in crime Randy and I can both do our own thing with it, and hopefully get to play and shoot the same models in very different ways, with totally different results. There are after all also plenty of options besides the wet collodion thing we are starting with: dry collodion, liquid silver gelatin emulsion, Ilford reversal paper, X-RAY sheet film , rephotographed photo paper negatives, etc...

   We really need to practice pouring, a lot. So I mixed a liter or so of a slightly viscous golden colored gelatin solution to practice blanks with without wasting the collodion. 

Post 17. Testing the test kit

     Well, so far not so good.  First we tried using a light meter set at 0.5 ASA and doing exposure stripes of just a black, a grey and a white cards with 1, 2, 4, etc... flashes. The resulting very weak and low contrast plate vaguely showed the three cards, but strangely no exposure increment stripes... I can't fathom why.

    Having just barely finished my silver nitrate tank and plate holder for this first test, I didn't have a holder to dip the plate and take it out of the tank, so I grabbed a thin brass rod and bent it to make a makeshift holder. That was a double mistake. The acrylic plate floated up, we had to somehow fish it out, and the brass reacted with the silver nitrate...  

   So I bought some 1/4"x1/4" and 1/8"x1/8"square and 1/4"x1/8"rectangular plastic rods at the model store and made a plate dipper with grooves that would prevent the 5x7 acrylic plate from floating away.

  Last Sunday, I decided to set up a test stage using an anatomical model with fair skin and glass eyes in front of a black paper background, and a grey scale:

  For the first test, I made a mess trying to pour collodion on the plate directly from one of the Erlenmeyer Flask that came with the kit , but still went ahead and dipped it in the silver nitrate tank, making another mess because the tank was vey full and it made the solution spill over, wasting some. I left it anyway in the silver nitrate bath for 3 minutes or so (it is not supposed to be really critical) while I mopped up the spill. That plate dipper drags out too much solution too, so I will have to make a slighter one with 1/8"x1/8" rods instead of 1/4" rods.

   I used one full power flash of my strobe placed 3 feet from the subject with the lens wide open. I developed it under a red safe light until the negative image came up, washed it to stop the development, turned the lights on, bleached it in the fixer, dried it, and sprayed a coat of black lacquer on top.

  I should explain that rather than putting the plates in front of a dark paper or cloth, I found I got deeper blacks and better contrast by simply spraying a coat of black lacquer over the dry collodion emulsion. That may not be archival, but will work fine for initial tests. 

  The plate is on the dark side, the grey scale is blurred and there are irregular lighter swirls caused by the bad collodion pour, but at least I HAD AN IMAGE!

     For the second test, I cut a 5x7 piece of aluminum flashing and painted it black with lacquer. So this is technically a tintype instead of an ambrotype. I moved the camera and the strobe a little close at 2.5 feet and did one full power flash wide open. I switched hand, but the pour of collodion was still messy and wasteful. I developed about 15 to 20 seconds and ran water over it. I could not see any image, but after the fixer bath, I did get one, rather dark: 

   For test #3, I used a plexiglas plate. I moved the flash back to about 4 ft to try to give less exposure and slightly more time in the developer. And it did come out the best so far, lighter and with more contrast, except that the plate got badly scratched when I pulled it out of the silver nitrate tank, and my pour is still creating messy swirls(I will claim that clumsiness is because of my shriveled up left hand and a bad cut from a table saw on the thumb of the right hand) :

  Since a little less exposure yielded better results, I tried the fourth test with the lens stopped down to f8, and the resulting plate ended up with almost no image. 

  For the fourth test, the exposure was the same as #3, but I extended the develpment time to roughly 30 seconds, and ended up with a very dark image:

     

   Finally, I did my last plexiglas plate with the same exposure, but with a short development time, and it turned out better than the last one, but also too dark:

   So plate #3 was apparently the sweet spot in terms of both exposure and development, and we will have to try and define the best development time better next time.

   The plexiglas plates having been easy to use and having worked well, I ordered more to continue testing.

   

16. The rack and pinion focusing system, the silver nitrate tank

    On the Big Berta front, I have moved along albeit slowly building the beast, but made some progress. The wood panels require sanding, staining, and multiple coats of wipe on varnish, and have to dry overnight after each coat, so it is slow going.

   Both lids are now finished with several coats of wipe on varnish, and I have started working on the focusing mechanism. I have two 20" racks and two 0.5 MOD pinions to match.  My plan was to use an 8-32 threaded rod as the shaft because it fits the brass knurled knobs I bought, but I just realized it wasn't stiff enough across the 24" of the lid, so I will use a 1/4" steel rod instead, and use the other two brass knobs I have that can accept a larger hole. I ordered two new pinions with a 6mm bore to fit. The threaded rod will be covered with brass tubing. The brass knobs will be drilled and tapped 1/4-24 to fit the threaded rod.

    The shaft will go through a brass tube that will be attached to a caddy sliding between two guides. The caddy is a 7 1/2" x7 1/2" x 3/4" piece of birch plywood with a slot in which the brass tube will be glued in position. To facilitate the sliding, a 7 1/2" x 8" x1/8" piece of teflon is attached to the bottom side by a dozen recessed flat head screws. It will be guided by two 3/4" x 1/8" strips of wood and held down by two 1"x 1/8" aluminum flat bars.

 

    I did more research on the ambrotype chemicals and kits, and ended up ordering from another supplier. Basically, the only expensive chemical in the kits is the silver nitrate. One liter of 10% bath is $458 at Bostick and Sullivan, but only $238 at UV Photographics, 

   So I ordered the larger 8x10 kit from them for $370, plus an extra different developer to test.

   I then considered making the silver nitrate tank to sensitize our 4x5, 5x7 and 8x10 test plates in the first stage of our project. The one liter of solution we get with the kit is actually barely enough to fill a very thin 8 1/4" x 11" x 11/16" tank(inside dimensions). So I ordered a 12"x 36" sheet of 1/4" thick black plexiglas, cut the panels and am now ready to assemble the tank as soon as I get the special aquarium silicone glue. When we get to the 16x20 plates, we will have to sensitize them in a rocking tray in the darkroom, because a proper tank would just require way too much silver nitrate solution(around 4 to 5 liters, costing over a $1000). 

 

   Next I need to make the plate holders, and I am still hesitating between two different designs, and whether to make it a spring back or not. We will need both an 8x10 holder (with 4x5 and 5x7 inserts), and a 16x20 plate holder with set of inserts so we can shoot 4x5 or 5x7 test plates before we splurge with a 16x20( which takes 16 times more silver nitrate than a 4x5...).

   Every time I get into a new project, painting, sculpture, projections, whatever, I spend a good deal of time researching what has already been done, and that helps me figure out what it is I really like and what turns me on. That initial inspiration always ends up brewing, simmering, and after some brainstorming and experimenting leading to something that is personal, and hopefully has not been done before.

   So I have been surfing Pinterest looking at and collecting all kinds of black and white portraits, new and old. There is so much material out there I just keep scrolling pretty fast until something catches my eye, for whatever reasons. There are a lot of good portraits of famous people by famous photographers, lots of perfectly lighted flawless images, but I don't really pay attention to the names, as there is a world of difference between a good portrait and a work of art. I cannot define exactly what is that special quality that transcend a mere photograph, I just know it when I see it, and there are ultimately very few that pass that test. 

    I also have been rummaging through 30 years worth of digital files and selecting in a special folder the portraits I shot on occasion over the last 50 years. I still like very much the wacky series of nudes I shot of three models I hired once for two hours or so. The shots were planned ahead and the props at the ready, so we got a lot done in a couple hours. And the young hairless model was so humorous, creative and expressive that we got along and played very well together, coming up with a number of unplanned shot.

15. Building the box

     The final size for the back standard is 23 3/4"H x 22 1/2"W, so the inside of the box needs to be exactly 24"x22 3/4",  and the outside  and the lids will be 25 1/2"x 24 1/4".

     A sheet of oak plywood at Home Depot is almost $100, so as much as I would like to make the whole box look like solid oak, I think I will just use some 21"x25"pieces of birch plywood I already have, and  use  strips of oak to cover the edges of the plywood and extend them to the required 25 1/2", which will also give a better anchor to the screws holding the piano hinges.

    So here is the first lid stained, and the second lid in progress:

     Next step is a couple of coats of wipe on polyurethane.

14. More testing the lens

   I found on Amazon the other day a really good deal of $69 for a Goddox 400 watts strobe.

   I have had a box of photographic darkroom supplies stored in my attic for 30 years, and found in it a box of 8x10 Kodak T-Max100, a full bottle of HC-110 Kodak developer and a bag of fixer. I questioned Google about using such old film and chemical, and the answer was rather encouraging and suggesting to give a couple more stops of exposure.

    So Randy came over to play yesterday afternoon, loaded up a couple of 8x10 holders with that nearly antique film, and shot some portraits of me as a test of that lens I got for our Big Berta. We mixed a quart of developer and fixer, and processed the film in a rolling tank I used 50 years ago to process 8x10 Cibachrome prints. The first sheet came out blank, so he increased the exposure for the next two. This time, even though it looked blank again on first look, there was a faint image visible over a white background. I processed the last sheet this morning using about 3 times more HC-110 concentrate to mix the developer, and got a still very weak but stronger image:

   I scanned it and processed it in Photoshop. The result surprised me as, disregarding the dust sots due to my dropping the negative on the floor, the tonal range is pretty good for such a grossly underexposed negative

and the image is pretty sharp:

    We will figure out exposure issues at a later date, as the purpose of the test was to see how sharp the lens is, and that is quite satisfactory at f9 for our ultimate purpose.

13. Testing the lenses

  I finally got around to mounting that 1940 Bausch and Lomb 6 1/2 x 8 1/2 Tessar on my 8x10 view camera, and even though it is called a 6 1/2 x 8 1/2, it seems to cover the whole 8x10 frame at 8 ft from the subject. There is no focal length indicated on these lenses, and Google gives it between 180mm and 210mm. The maximum aperture on the ring is 4.6, and the glass diameter is 53mm, so that would calculate to roughly 53 mm x 4.6 = 243mm. In any case, it is on the short side for an 8x10 as a portrait lens. But then again, I tend to like shorter lenses.

  While I was at it, I made a wooden mounting plate and tested the big 60cm f9 Apo Tessar. With my maximum bellows extension of 25", I can focus on the rainbow neon about 12 ft away. As big as that front lens is though, it is still rather dim... And we won't know until the 16x20 camera is finished whether it covers that format satisfactorily.

12. Making the bellows

      The very thin vinyl I used to make the bellows for the 8x10 I built 40 years ago was very thin, yet  held up very well, so I looked for some more of the same both at MASCO and Bonds Brothers.  Unfortunately, they didn't have it. I considered ordering on Amazon the cheap Chinese stuff they sell for boats upholstery and that people complain about being too thin, but it comes folded in a bag and full of creases.  I ended up buying the thinest material they had at Bonds Brothers,  which is like a heavy 60" wide re-enforced waterproof tent fabric. It is black on both sides. But it turned out very heavy compared to the original, and I wish I had not bought it. 

     It is too thick to do a traditional bellows construction with ribs between two layers of fabric, so I will try to just fold it as is. I did a test cutting a 15" strip from the roll of vinyl, and it worked, sort of. I first drew all the lines and folds with a white grease pencil, and just  started folding. I used a steel roller to press the creases and clips to hold the folds in place while doing the corners. I used two pieces of wood and two vise clamps to press the folds really hard. It could work, but will be difficult for the full x4 bigger bellows.

      Well, I got the vinyl, so why not give it a go! I rolled it out on the dining table and laid out every fold with a china grease pencil. I can clean the lies later with naphta. The folds will be 1 3/16', and so is the overlap for the corners. The sides will be 22".

    

     started folding and pressing the creases with my steel roller, but then it would be hard to do every fold that way, so I started just folding by hand and creasing with my fingernails.  I use large steel office clips to hold the folds together and to press the corners. I will need more of those, so I ordered some even larger ones.  It is getting kinda messy... Hope a dozen will do...

11. The front standard is now complete:

   The bracket is made just like the one holding up the rear standard, out of 1/4" aluminum.

10. Designing and making the front standard

     I was originally going to keep things very simple, as we really won't need raises, tilts and swings much to shoot our collodion glass plate portraits. But then why not build a fully functional view camera. I have after all all the time in the world in my hands.

    I started toying with two possible design:

but finally settled on the same as for the back standard, except without the rack and pinions:

   Obviously, that decision means I will have to make a set of bellows for the front too.

   I used the remaining oak plank to make a 9"x9" frame to which the 5.5"x5.5" lens board will be attached: