Monorail view camera pt. 2

OK, a couple of months without a post and of course the camera is completed now. To be honest there wasn't a whole lot of "woodworking" to be done after assembling the front and back frames, Instead, the project was all about fabricating parts in wood, metal, and fabric.

The lens boards were made after the frames were completed. I have one lens, with a sort of odd-ball 33mm diameter shutter. I cut the hole in the lens board to the right there just freehand with a knife, and sanded it smooth. These lens boards are just two pieces of 2mm birchplywood laminated to provide a lip. The walnut veneer was added for aesthetic reasons. All the gluing was done with some contact cement I bought in France to repair some shoes once.

Arguably the most challenging part of this build was making the bellows. There are plenty of resources online for assisting with this process, Google is your friend. The construction is a sandwich of a thin, coated nylon, card stock, and bookbinder cloth, and should be completely light-tight as well as fold flat. I sketched the bellows on my phone's CAD program, printed out at full scale, and made a model first to get the size right.

The assembled materials and tools for this day-long job. My daughter helped on a professional day when she was staying home from school. Here we've started gluing the card slats on the nylon.

The fourth side must be glued on a sort of ironing-board we fabricated from a parquet flooring offcut from a building site. After this step, the bookbinder's fabric was glued on, with the seam on the opposite side. Then the whole construction was turned inside-out and birch plywood frames were glued to the ends.

The front standards being fabricated from aluminum bar stock. I drilled a bunch of holes, and filed them flat.

Basically all the parts, just waiting for some screws.

The completed camera, on Easter.

One of the first shots, of my daughter and her friend. Old Arista ortho-lith film processed in Polymax.

New project: Monorail view camera pt. 1

Being a fellow of many interests, I've always wanted a view camera to be able to play with movements and giant negatives. It may seem anachronistic in this age of phones with 20 megapixel optics, but view cameras offer the ability to correct perspective in-camera as well as other focus tricks, and the giant negatives (4x5 inches in my case) when scanned still offer far greater resolution than any digital camera.

View cameras can be bought complete relatively cheaply now, but of course I'd rather build one and challenge myself with a precision project. This won't be my first homemade camera: I've made dozens of pinhole cameras in the past, and most recently made this simple large format camera.

My basic plan started by finding a lens of appropriate specs (135mm f 5.6 in this case) and price (almost cheap as dirt) on ebay, downloading Jon Grepstads plans here, and sketching my ideas on my phone's CAD program. My first diversion from Grepstad's plans was to order a cheap double dovetailed camera Arca Swiss compatible rail and a pair of compatible clamps from Ebay. These things are ubiquitous out there nowadays, and very inexpensive, though they take weeks to ship. The rail is really designed for mounting cameras with giant lenses, or stereophotography rigs, but will serve me fine for this camera.

Secondly, I want to have a smaller front standard to make for a more compact total kit.

The rear standard will also be redesigned with a different focusing screen spring mechanism and non-rotating back.

Most of the parts of the camera. I had a little black walnut, and procured a little more (including veneer) for this project.

The first diversion from the plans: I'm using polycarbonate for my focusing screen. It needs a light texture on it, so I taped a piece of 1000 grit wet/dry paper on a sheet of glass, and using window cleaner for lubricant scuffed away. It worked admirably, though ultimately I may get another piece bead blasted for better uniformity.

After marking the film frame with a silver paint pen, I cut pieces of 5mm walnut as a frame for the ground glass.

These were just glued with contact cement on both sides of the glass, providing I rigid sandwich construction.

The larger black walnut pieces were dimensioned, and then I got to play with my newish moving fillister plane to make rabbets.

The frame was constructed with stopped sliding dovetails. I'm not too happy about the gappy joinery.

Nor am I happy with this eviden twist.

Glued up it's flat, but the joints are pretty ugly. I'm out of practice. And I really could have used a 1/8" chisel for this job.

The finished parts so far: focusing screen and rear standard, with the lens and monrail waiting for the rest of the components.

Bukowski's Market

Lately I've been watching the auctions at Bukowski's Market for inspiration. Furniture here is a notch or two above Craigslist, but not deemed worthy enough for Bukowski's upscale real auction-auctions. What's nice is the variety of furniture exhibited: midcentury Scandinavian, Art Nouveau (jugend), and traditional Scandinavian (allmoge, dare I say "Furniture of Necessity"?) are all well-represented. And the pieces are professionally photographed from all interesting angles with nice, even lighting.

I've been pasting scores of images from these auctions in a folder labelled "Inspiration" to keep for future reference.

Inard CAD for Android

For the last few years I've been using the excellent Inard CAD program for Android on my phone and tablet. The app's ingenious and intuitive input system allows one to quickly create drawings of projects or spaces and share them either as printable pdf files or in formats that can be opened and modified in desktop CAD programs such as AutoCAD.

Here's an example, of a little nightstand project I have mocked up and will document in coming blog entries.

Google Pineboard

You may have heard of Google Cardboard. This is a clever little Google project that allows one to use a smart phone as a virtual reality headset. Virtual reality was that on-the-edge immersive technology we all remember being hyped in the early 90s, just before the internet took off. By folding a bit of cardboard around a phone and a couple of plastic lenses, a sort of stereoscopic viewer is created, not unlike those I'm sure you've played with in antique stores. The phone's accelerometer tracks your head movement without any lag. The experience is otherworldly, and available apps provide 360 degree photography, stereoscopic movies, and virtual roller coaster rides.  You can even use this device to view 3D models and designs using Sketchfab.

I was curious about testing this gadget, but wasn't about to pay the 200 kr local retailers want for a kit. The concept is sold as a "DIY" project, but let's be honest here: who's got 43mm focal length lenses kicking around? Searching online for the lenses, I found a kit for less than 30 kr that would be delivered to my door from Hong Kong. So I pulled the trigger and placed an order.

While the cardboard in the kit isn't from a pizza box, after a week of using it and sharing it with friends, the accumulated skin grease certainly makes it look like one. So I set about making a replacement for the case with some wood I had kicking about:

Here are the materials for the project: a Google Cardboard kit including lenses and magnets ( to trigger a magnetometer for device input), my phone, and a couple of surfaced pine boards, one unfortunately flat-cut about 8mm by 95mm, the other 15mm by 21mm. I also had a scrap of 1/8" birch plywood I would use for the faceplate. Dimensions were based upon the original cardboard, my phone, and the materials at hand. I didn't even bother making any drawings beforehand.

I started by plowing a groove to fit my phone in the center of the smaller stock. I cut a length and plowed two parallel grooves, as I didn't have a cutter the precise width needed. To hold the small piece of stock I used a small metal vise. The final groove was cleaned with the chisel. This operation would be better performed on a wider piece of stock that would then be ripped to width. But I improvised and it worked OK.

I then used the same plane to plow a pair of small rabbets to join the phone-holding stock to the side stock. I cleaned the joint with a small side rabbet plane. I also plowed a groove in the side pieces to hold the faceplate. If you do not have a little plow plane, this design may have to be modified. Perhaps some aluminum or brass extrusions could be used to hold the phone and faceplate? Or use a saw kerf and narrow chisel to do the same job?

After cutting all the stock to length and shooting the edges with a low angle block plane against my bench hook, here's a mock-up of the assembly. I planned to dovetail the case sides together, leaving the bottom piece shifted slightly outwards to support the bottom of the phone when it is slid into the flanking posts. There are many resources on the internet to aid one in cutting dovetails by hand: Google is your friend. I laid out by eye and with a bevel gauge, and used a cheap dozuki saw and a 1/4" chisel to cut the tails and pins.

Predictably, the flatsawn side pieces split along the groove for the faceplate when chopping the pins. The only thing to do was to repair it with some PVA and clamps while holding it in place in the joint.

Here's a dry-fit of the assembly with the phone in place and the Cardboard app running, to ensure that the image is centered on the center of the headset.

After cutting all the case pieces, I made the faceplate from the 1/8" plywood. The lenses were exactly 1" (25.4mm) in diameter, so I used a 1" forstner bit to form the eye-hole and the bridge of the nose. While I had the brace out, I used a 20mm bit to cut the peak of the nose on the lower case, as well as sink a recess for the 19.5mm magnet. (For my telephone model, a Sony Xperia Z2, the magnet function works best on the bottom right of the device, as opposed to the left temple location that is standard in Cardboard kits.)

I then used a coping saw to  carefully shape the forehead and cheek curves of the upper and lower parts of the case before assembly.

A whole mess of clamps eased assembly, which probably could have been done in stages.

I gave the viewer a light test coat of a raw linseed oil-beeswax mix followed by a light rubbing of shellac.

During testing, I realized I'd forgotten the secondary nosepiece, which prohibits stray light from disturbing opposing eyes' viewers. I cut a piece from a scrap of plywood and epoxied it in place.

Final shaping of the curves and smoothing of edges was done with a rounded rasp, file, and sandpaper on a cork.

The finished viewer. I painted the inside of the case with some flat black acrylic craft paint we had, and gave the outside a couple coats of linseed/beeswax/shellac. I secured the lenses with some silicone, but may end up using epoxy if it does not hold.

All the tools used in this project: not a huge investment, and all very compact and quiet to use: perfect for apartment woodworking!

All in all, this was a fun practice project. Google cardboard is a perfect way to dip one's toes in virtual reality technology. It's fun to share the experience of riding virtual roller coasters or flying in Google Earth with friends, and this wooden case will certainly hold up better than a piece of cardboard.