Balda Baldinette

[David]

A while back I posted about my Baldinette, which I bought with a rusted-through body but A-okay shutter and bellows. I've refurbished it to fix the holes and stop the rust from progressing. However, I haven't yet photographed the repairs. For now, here is the camera before the repairs.

After I'm mobile again, I'll re-shoot this little guy and show the finished repair.

1

The Baldinette

2

A better view of the rust

3

The inside, where it was really bad.

4

The Westar 50mm 1:2.9 lens (nicer units had Schneider lenses).

5

The viewfinder is dented, and there's not a lot I can do about that.

6

Lens, strut, shutter, and bellows detail.

I can't pronounce yet how well I think it performs, having only used it twice, and both rolls turned out less than perfectly. One was clearly due to user error and the other due to very bad weather. So, in 2013, I'll take it back out and see how it performs under better conditions.

[Attila]

This is very nice from you to save this little guy , look forward restored shoots and output from camera!

[David]

I'm finally mobile enough to where I could get some photos of some cameras that are past due. Here are the post-repair photos of the Baldinette. Even though I just took the photos tonight, I did the repair somewhere between 14 and 18 months ago.

I started out with a Dremel and got rid of all the rust. this made the hole a LOT larger, but at least it was rust-free. This was VERY tedious and the work revealed a lot of surface rust on the film door and inside the film compartment. To protect the lens, I placed clear shipping tape over the film rails (with ample space to not touch the lens. Even though I pressed it down very well, some tiny rust flakes still got into the lens compartment. No worries, though, as I picked the mailing tape because it's staticy and all the rust particles were attracted to it's sticky side.

To patch the hole I used car engine block tape, which is absolutely opaque. I placed a sheet the side of the leatherette on the camera's face (just the section with the rust.) To help make sure it was completely opaque and to prevent inward tape bowing due to the front piece sticking to an inside piece, I used a tiny amount of car body filler (Bondo) to fill the rust hole. This proved very challenging. In fact, it was the hardest part of the repair. I eventually gave up and left the hole unfilled. THe tape sticky sides face each other, so this makes the repair pretty darn strong.

After the Bondo (finally dried), I sanded the inside smooth-ish (the tape had already gone on the outside, oh, this took three tires, BTW.) The Bondo crumbled, and I decided not to use it. The final metal surface was rough enough for the tape to adhere well (I sanded the metal faces, too,) and about the same thickness as the metal. This yielded a fairly uniform finished product.

I painted over the tape on the front (what would be showing and then a small additional margin) in matte black paint. This blends better with the leatherette than the gloss black tape finish.

Using the same paint, I painted the inside where the rust had been removed to bare metal (you can see some of this on the photos.)

Result: light-tight! It works pretty well, too. The shutter fires at all speeds accurately. The film advance is a bit difficult, but hey, for a camera that had clearly been at least partly in the water or otherwise stored VERY poorly, this is a pretty good result.

From two feet, the repair is basically invisible unless someone is looking for it. One of my friends actually couldn't find it from five feet.

1

Some of the leatherette was salvageable. THe tape covering the entire face under the leatherette prevented a tape-related crease in the leatherette.

2

You can see a slight dimple here, but more importantly, how well the repair blends into the camera.

3

I didn't quite get all the rust, but these Baldinettes are prone to it. THey were made of VERY cheap stamped steel and, though I say above it probably contacted water, that may be wrong. It may have contacted atmospheric moisture. Seriously. These things rust like Yugos on Guam.

4

The inside repair, much less concerned with aesthetics. You can see on the film door where there's matte paint brushed on. That was a rusty area that had not perforated the camera nor done more than cause a few paint bubble. I Almost missed it but deicded to remove a few paint samples from around the rusty area to make sure no rust had spread under the paint.

5

The matte paint did not hold up well to the roll of film I loaded, but that's okay. That spot wasn't really rusty.

[iangreenhalgh1]

Nice repair job. I have a near mint one of these with a Schneider lens, never used it, if I remember correctly, the shutter sticks.