mframes

So after discovering that the bellows of the Makina had holes in them, I set about formulating a plan of how to repair them so that the camera would be usable before my new bellows arrived from Japan and me sending them and the Makina off for repair. I read various forum posts about repairing bellows and eventually came to logical conclusion that the best stuff to use was silicon sealant. There are a lot of different grades of this stuff. I’ve only ever use it to seal bath, sink and shower edges (and sandpits – but that’s another story), and the stuff I settled on was marine grade RTV silicone. It met all the right requirements for my needs – black, cured at room temperature, but most important of all – stayed flexible after curing. This was critical because the bellows collapse and expand (obviously).

So with the plan in place, two evenings were spent in the kitchen with a head torch, the Makina on a tripod, some cocktail sticks, tweezers, kitchen roll, a lot of patience and a lot of blinking, eye strain and swearing. It wasn’t too bad really ;-) It wasn’t the neatest repair job that I’d done, but it definitely wasn’t the worst. After the Makina had rested with the back open for two days following the ‘surgery’, it was ready for inspection in the garage again. As before, camera on a tripod with a very bright LED light inside the body, back closed, lights off and wait… This time there seemed to be total darkness when prodding the bellows. Yes! Maybe, just maybe I might have done it..!

A day or so later, I loaded a roll of Fuji Acros 100 into the Makina and with some trepidation, I excitedly went out for a lunchtime stroll to shoot some black and white medium format film goodness as a test roll to verify my repair skills. I hope to the get the scans of this roll back at the weekend so we’ll see if the bellows are indeed fixed…

And for what it’s worth, the remaining five photos that I thought would be compromised by the problem with the bellows turned out to be not too bad. This one came out ok-ish and these ones weren’t too bad either. A nice surprise.

Fingers crossed for the test roll results… I’m cautiously optimistic and have already shot 1.5 rolls of Ilford HP5 since finishing the test roll on Friday :-)