Dad came to visit and he brought with him the remainders from his darkroom.
There is stuff there that I haven't seen in 25 years. There are a few items
which I never used nor have I ever seen used. I had a thing against "old
stuff" so I preferred to ignore some things.
I've got some cleanup and restoration work to do on a few items, but of
interest are a few things which have me a bit excited. There are two contact
printers, one is strictly for 4x5 and the other will go up to 5x7. The 5x7
contact printer has it's own easel built in. Of course, these are the
contact printers with their own internal light source. Way cool.
I also got his processing tank for 4x5. I haven't counted the slots, but it
looks like it will hold 16 or so sheets of film. The slots are curved and
the whole thing really doesn't take that much chemistry. No more tray or
drum processing!!! Yeah! I've used this tank quite a bit years ago, but
forgot how many sheets it held.
There is an Elwood (???) enlarger which I'll get rid of (along with the
Federal 4x5), but the Elwood has a decent old (somewhere around 1955 give or
take) Rodonstock lens.
Another cool item(s) are the print dryers. One is drum and the other is flat
(two sided) which will hold a pair of 11x14 prints. Designed to ferrotype if
image-side down, or matte dry if back-side down. The stuff worked great for
all those years we used them.
We were discussing the darkroom usage, and I had forgotten (or never
knew/realized given my young age), but dad had been the church
"photographer" for years and had done portrait and event photography. As it
was a decent sized church, he took and printed many thousands of pictures on
this equipment. It's been dormant since about 1984. I grew up assisting him
in the darkroom, but by the time I was old enough to do more than just stir
prints, he was starting to wind down from the big production years. That old
coal-bin (literally) was quite the production facility in its day.
There will be a few items, such as enlargers, which will be available for
cost of shipping.
He forgot about the fridge full of old boxes of printing paper. I know there
are boxes of 5x7 and 8x10 papers dating back to the fifties. I'm sure most
of it is fogged to death, but before we toss said items, I'll do a bit of
research--maybe it has value just for the silver content if nothing else.
Otherwise, maybe I can process the paper blank and then coat them with
alternative emulsion.
It's interesting that some of the stuff is beyond "antique", but then again
there are some things which can be used as quite the novelty item. There is
a "rough cut" paper trimmer which is probably quite the rarity now as the
bulk of them have been trashed years ago.
AG
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