Bicycle rebuild
The cost was mostly time; the materials came to less than a theatre ticket, thanks to a second-hand shop near the cathedral.
I try to answer every letter, whether it comes from Bologna or further away, even if it takes longer than I would like. Halfway through I changed my mind about the design, which cost a weekend but was worth it.
Notes on this sit in the same box as a radio from the seventies and a folding table. Most evenings on it ended on the train into Bologna with a battered toolbox and a page of notes.
How it went
- Sketch it on paper first
- Gather materials and tools
- Live with it for a few weeks
- Build a rough first version
- Show it to someone honest
- Fix whatever broke
Notes
One wet weekend in June, I finally got it to the point where it mostly worked. An old colleague helped with the fiddly bits, and the result is better for it. Feel free to borrow anything useful about film cameras from this site, with or without a mention. It still has a slight wobble, but I have decided that is part of its charm.
The plan changed twice, mostly because of the finish and partly because of the glue-up. I kept a short log on the back step while working on it, mostly so I would remember how long each step took. As it happens, this started as a birthday present one Friday in February and grew from there. Most of the measuring happened at the kitchen table, with a drawer of string and tape holding the paper flat and someone at the library offering advice.
The hardest part was the wiring, which took a long weekend on its own. Everything here was done with basic tools, mainly an old hand plane and plenty of tea. Pages here change slowly, usually early on Tuesday mornings, and that suits film cameras just fine.
The design of this page is as bare as I could make it so that it will still work in ten years, much like a jar of odd screws. Some of the older notes about film cameras are out of date, but I keep them as a record of where it all started. Thanks for stopping by; everything here was made cheerfully, mostly at a friend’s place across town. Materials came from a car boot sale and a neighbour’s shed, which made the whole thing much cheaper.