So here it goes, a bit of background and then the first steps of building my second cigar box guitar:

So first a little background. Back in their first year Make Magazine ran an article on an electric cigar box guitar. It was strung with masons line and used a piezo element for a pickup. I was intrigued. But I can’t play guitar and don’t have an amp. So it was filed away as something for another day. And sure enough a few issues latter Make ran an article on how to make a cheap amp out of a LM386 audio amplifier chip.

It just so happens I have a handfull of LM386’s laying around. Back in High School and friend and I bought a bunch to build small amplifiers to go with some experiments we were doing with building our own sound cards. (Well, not full sound card’s. Just resistor tree DAC’s hung off a parallel port with the computer doing the hard part.) I even knew right where I had the 386’s. A quick trip to Radio Shack for a few little things I didn’t have on hand, and a trip into the garage to find an old surround speaker without it’s twin followed by an evening on the breadboard and with the soldering iron later:

I had an amp!  I also finally came up with a cigar box and decided it was time to build.  I followed the instructions in Make and came up with:

My first cigar box guitar!  It was strung with masons line as the Make article suggested.  I experimented with nails held on with rubber bands for frets like the article used…but found it easier to play fretless.  Not that I could actually play anything.  I also had a heck of a time trying to get it into any kind of tune and within a few days found a number of online cigar box guitar sites and learned just what was possible.  I ended up replacing the twine with actual guitar strings fairly quickly, then modifying the eye bolt tuners to try and get them to hold the tension of the real strings.  But it just wasn’t working well.  Plus the tension of the strings was starting to warp the neck.

So I never really liked it enough to really learn to play it.  A few friends who already knew how to play guitar did manage to crank out some actual music with it though so I knew the potential was there.  And eventually (this past November) I ended up getting some actual tuning machines for it and suddenly it was playable enough I started to get interested in it again.  I even cut up some cotter pins and made frets for it.  The neck was still warping worse and worse but I was actually able to start learning how to play it successfully for the first time.

And about that same time my friend J mentioned he had an empty cigar box if I wanted to try and build another.  It took awhile for us to get together and to finally get my hands on the box, and at first I wasn’t very hyped about it.  It was very plain, in a reddish brown color that didn’t call out to me, and it was built differently than most cigar boxes.  But it was nice thin real wood, and did ring nicely when I knocked it with my knuckles.   Besides I still had 3 tuners left over and was itching to build!  So on the way hope I stopped and picked up some red oak to make a neck, and a smaller piece to make a fingerboard.  The color of the box was starting to give me ideas.  I also looked through every home improvement store in town looking for little brass hinges or other things that might make a nice tail piece to make mounting the strings easier.  I bought a couple hinges but ended up not using any of them.

My first attempt at using real tuners on the first CBG was very rough and I wasn’t 100% happy with how it came out.  There wasn’t enough break over the nut even with the tuners cut in like that, the tuners weren’t positioned very well at all.  But it did give me ideas and inspiration for another idea on how to do the head.  Not wanting to waste the one chunk of oak I had on hand I decided to test my idea on a piece of cheap pine first.

The idea worked.  And the little chunk of pine strung up with strings I didn’t use on an actual guitar ended up being nice for testing how boxes sound, just touch it to them and give it a strum to get a feel for the tone of a box.  I did cut the lower portion just a hair too thin on this test – but since it was just scrap wood anyway that was no big deal.  It was also good practice to get a feel for how to make the necessary cuts and how to do a better job on the piece of oak.  Thanks to that the oak came out very nice when I did finally put it on the saw

I did burn the oak a little on the blade of the table saw, most of it sanded out but some is still visible.  While waiting for the glue on the head joint to dry I worked on the fingerboard.   The first box had an absurdly long scale length since it was meant to be used with the masons line originally and I never got around to shortening it up.  It also had way too much action making it VERY difficult to play without a slide.  So this time I knew I wanted to have lower string action and a shorter scale.  I figured using a fingerboard on top of the neck would help get better break over the nut and bridge while enabling me to set the action up nice and low.  I also planned on using real frets this time so with a separate fingerboard if I messed up I just had to make a new fingerboard and not a whole new neck.

But it’s time for me to start thinking about making dinner, and this is getting to be a fairly long post so I’m going to leave it hanging here until I get a chance to update again.  It probably won’t be tomorrow night (we’ve got brew night) and it probable won’t be for a few days after that since Kieth is supposed to be in town for a few days starting any day now.  But just like I finally got around to starting this story I promise I will get around to continuing it.  I need to finish it up soon too, CBG #3 and #4 are already under construction and I’d rather be talking about them right now.

But it’s the last day of the contest so I’ve got to try one more entry:

How to build a cigar box guitar – Free Plans at www.cigarboxnation.com.

Ok, I know I’ve promised a couple of people a weekend update.  It’s going to be a bit longer…it’s really not worth the wait…but I don’t have ANY photos to go with it.  And since the whole point of the weekend was photography that just doesn’t seem right.  The chemicals are cooling right now so I can process the film I shot and Amy will hopefully give me her memory card tonight.  So this is just a place holder post.

The reason for the placeholder?  I added a new skill to my resume just now.  Camera repair!  I recently bought a Bronica ETRS off ebay for $45.  The camera is gorgeous, looks like it’s been in it’s original box it’s whole life.  But – something was wrong.  I could remove the film back with the darkslide out…and the shutter wouldn’t release.  Not wanting to make it any worse but now having everything except a body I placed another order, this time to KEH, for a new body…and while I was at it a $10 “ugly” finder, a $10 “ugly” speed grip and a $30 “Bargain” 150mm lens to go with the $50 “Bargain” body.

The new body from KEH works great.  I found that my $10 ebay special film back sometimes skips frames…but for $10…what are ya going to do.  I’ll just keep my eyes open for a deal on a back in better condition…I want 2-3 more anyway.

So tonight with the original and much nicer looking but locked up body sitting on my desk teasing me I figured “What the heck”.  It’s broken already…let’s see what’s wrong.  Working the winder and various levers and catchs I thought I had a pretty good idea what may be wrong with it.  There was one lever that appeared to be behind something it should have been in front of….it was part of the lens release mechanism but seemed to be connected to the film back detection levers.  So I took that side off first.  Examining the workings I pretty much determined that yes – that piece was what was causing the problem.

But couldn’t get it back into it’s proper position without releasing the shutter…which I still couldn’t do from this side.  So I screwed it back together and took the other side off instead.

Figured out the other shutter interlocks on that side…but still couldn’t release the shutter.  Decided to put two and two together at that point.  Took the other side back apart again so both sides were now bare…and manually triggered the safety while pressing the shutter…ca-chunk.  It worked, the shutter released!  Recocked the shutter…and pressed the shutter without manually overriding anything…ca-chunk – it worked again!

Put the sides back and and dry fired it a few more times…it works great!  What’s more is I think I know how it happened.  I think that if you cock the shutter while holding the lens release back this could happen.   I didn’t test it while I had the sides off…but I’m going to avoid doing that just to be safe

So here’s the guts of my now repaired camera:

What was wrong

 That was where I found the problem.  The little round thing with the spring around it is part of the lens release.  There’s a little lever that’s supposed to be captured by the groove on that deal.  It was behind it instead.  This is after I fixed it so you can’t really see the lever that was misplaced.

Access to the problem area

This was the sideview of the problem area.  The lever that was misplaced is attached to the brass bar near the bottom.  The entire thing was supposed to be pushed more forward.  Pushing the grey bit on the right towards the lens tricked the camera into thinking the film back was properly seated and the darkslide was removed.  That should be the default position…but the lever was stuck against the round thing which kept it from returning to the default position.  Pushing the grey bit forward was the key to releasing the shutter and allowing things to reset properly!

The winding mechanism

And this is the other side, the infamous winding mechanism which is apparently one of the first things to go on these cameras.  Figuring out how the shutter release worked from here helped me figure out how to solve the problem.  But I now know the problem could have been solved entirely from the other side.  Still neat that I got to see this.

So – I now have two working ETRS bodies.  I’ll probably keep this one and re-sell the KEH one…or I may keep it as a spare.  We’ll have to see what happens!

This one will be long with a lot of photos…no teaser photo for the front though.

I guess I’ll do this chronologically.  As per my last post I ended up going back and buying another tarp at the “Bargain” warehouse for $20 more than the last one cost me.  We then proceeded to try and get it up as quickly as possible Friday night in case the wind/rain came back.  That was no fun at all.  The other tarp went up easier than I had expected, this one fought us every step of the way and the extreme humidity made it just flat out miserable.  I soaked two shirts with sweat fighting to get that thing up…and had to take a break partway through to buy more rope because the 100 feet we started with just wasn’t enough.  I had planned on treating us to a nice dinner when we were done – but by the time I was done and showered the only place open was Applebees – who set a new low for service that night   Oh well, at least my “Perfect Margarita” pretty much was perfect and that did help!

The new tarp is on 90 degrees different than the last one, so we’ll see how that works out.  If you compare to the older photos you’ll see that the first replacement tarp has tightened up significantly since I put it up there.  I’m hoping this one does as well since it’s kind of loose and flappy right now:

From across the street showing the top of the new tarp.

From under the new tarp

Really, I’m not as overjoyed with the new tarp as I expected to be.  I was kind of looking forward to the white tarp so there would be better light under the carport for when I work on the vehicles.  And yes there is better light…but it seems like too much now.  Almost like there isn’t shade at all.  From the photos you can see that YES there is shade…but when you’re under there it’s bright.  Also means a lot more light coming in through the living room and kitchen windows.  Time will tell if I like it or not.  I’m thinking the next time we replace them I’ll get two layer tarps that are black on top and white on the bottom so they’ll give more shade but the white bottom will still be nice when working under there.

So moving on to Saturday.  We started out the day by going over to look at some darkroom equipment some people e-mailed Amy about after they saw her blog in the paper.  We didn’t have very high hopes…but it turned out they were a real friendly couple about our age and the gear was pretty nice.   We ended up buying a couple of things:

"New" enlarger

The Beseler 23C was the enlarger Amy learned to print on…so passing this up would have been hard!  It’s in great shape, just a little dusty.  Only has the 6×6 negative carrier (but oddly enough only a 50mm lens – 6×6 should have a 80mm lens) but we can get new carriers on ebay I’m sure.  We also picked up an orignal pre 45 Weston Master light meter, a Sekonic light meter, a fixed size enlarging easel that Amy liked, an Omega color analyizer and some safelights.  While we didn’t NEED another enlarger (I still have another Durts M670 in my parents basement and a Beseler 45 that I’m not sure how I’ll ever get out here since it’s so big!) the 23C does complement my Durst nicely.

The Durst is a diffusion color head with a quartz lamp.  That gives a soft light effect which tends to hide dust and scratches a little but at the cost of some fine detail and sharpness.  The 23C has a condenser head (though a diffusion head and a cold light head are available used) which gives a harsher light that results in dust and scratches showing easier…but also a sharper final image.  So having one of each gives us the best of both worlds letting us pick the right tool for each job!

With the new toys settled in we went out and did a little shopping for a piece of pegboard to hang in the laundry room to organize darkroom stuff, and look for a cabinet to put in there and the final things I needed to finish light proofing and ventilating the room.  The new cabinets at Lowes were nice, but more cash than we could justify – espically after having just bought a used enlarger we didn’t really need.  But the Habitat for Humanity restore used home improvement store had a few “gently” pre-owned cabinets that looked like they may work…we just needed to double check out measurements and come back the next day since they were closing soon.

A quick stop at the camera store for some more ID-11 and another pack of paper we found that they had another nice safelight on consignment which I picked up and they had Ilford Delta 100 in 120 in stock so we picked up a few rolls to shoot.  We went home and loaded up Amy’s Grandfathers Rolleicord and my Lubitel – then stopped back at the shop to put the Nikon 6006 my mom had given Amy a few years back up for sale in hopes it will help some student just getting started.  We then proceeded to snap a few shots around the river and downtown before coming home to dunk them in the developer.

We both managed to overexpose most of our shots.  Mine I was aiming for about 1 stop over exposed so I wasn’t surprised, they’re still very printable and I’m dying to see how a few of them enlarge.  Amy’s were a bit more overexposed than either of us expected, not sure if it was due to the odd aperture/shutter choices available on the camera, Amy’s unfamiliarity with the camera and light meter, the shutter possibly being a bit slow on the 75+ year old camera…or a combination of one or more of those.  It also seems there may be a small light leak in the camera, but it could just be Amy’s unfamiliarity with 120 film loading/unloading.  We’ll see after I get to run a roll through it.  She also only got 8 exposures due to us not realizing that the Rollei had a frame counter and automatic film advance stop that we were supposed to use instead of the red filter peep hole on the bottom.  oops.

On the plus side the lens is VERY sharp and she did get a few good shots.  I’m looking forward to being able to share them here soon!

Sunday we went back to the Habitat store and for $15 picked up a cabinet.  Loading it into the truck I started to have second thoughts though as part of the toe kick fell off.  The whole thing was pretty shakey.  And before we got it out of the truck the concrete and ceramic top (which we had planned on removing anyway) was falling off.  In fact the whole thing was in danger of collapsing under it’s own weight.  There was no back and the old particle board it was made of was not holding together very well.  I didn’t get a photo of it in it’s original state but here it is with the top and toe kick removed as Amy starts to clean it in preparation for paint:

"original" condition of cabinet

We gave it two good heavy coats of Kilz premium primer to seal in any mold or mildew that may have been lurking within it – and to keep out any that conditions in the laundry room / darkroom would subject it to.  We then decided to give it a coat of the light blue paint we had originally bought for our spare bedroom but decided not to use.  With the nearly full gallon sitting there I decided to just bite the bullet and paint the laundry room as well.  One less salmon colored room!  Only two left!  Our own bedroom and the back bedroom.  Our bedroom won’t be getting painted for awhile due to lack of space to move stuff around in there.  The back bedroom will probably wait as well since we have plans to make some major modificaitons back there semi-soon.

Before - from dining room

Before from back bedroom.

After - from dining room

After - From Back Bedroom, also note the new pegboard behind the sink and cabinet.

The laundry room feels a LOT bigger and cleaner now with the fresh coat of light blue paint!  It’s not perfect, I still have to trim around the fold out ironing board and above the washer dryer…and I was too lazy to move the washer dryer so there’s still salmon hiding behind them and the washtub…but overall it’s a BIG improvement!

I also finished installing the bathroom fan I bought a week or two ago – and you can see how we put a safelight bulb in one of the two overhead lights in the laundry room.  When we moved in we thought it was silly that there were two light circuits in such a small room – now it’s just what we needed!

Safelight and vent fan.

I know, I still need to wire the fan in.  I also want to add an outlet for the timer in that area and I want to move the lights and outlets in this room onto their own circuit anyway since the one they’re on now is shared with the kitchen and IMHO way overloaded.  With no attic access in this area though it won’t be much fun to pull the wires

The duct from the fan goes out to an old dryer exhaust duct in the water heater closet.  It had one way flaps on it so I know it wasn’t there to allow air to come in for the water heater vent and works perfect for our needs, I do want to fill in around it with some expanding foam though to block out any final light leaks and make sure it’s a good permanant seal.  The path the duct takes should prevent any light from coming in through the fan itself – and if not that duct will easily expand enough that I can reroute it to make sure no light will get in:

Vent duct.

There’s another vent near the floor in that closet which probably does let air in for the water heater.  It also lets in a lot of light.  So I got another set of the one way flaps to go on the inside of that duct….but need a bit more duct to get them installed still.  I also added a new threshold at the base of the door for that room which probably seals the light leaks sufficiently that I won’t need the flaps after all.  Have to wait and see.

The “new” cabinet I fixed up with some hardboard on the back and pine stringers across the top (the original ones were badly warped) which stregthened it up a LOT!  It went from barely able to support it’s own weight to something I would stand on.  The toe kick wasn’t necessary for the height we wanted but I did have to shim out the one corner to make up for it:

Height shim on cabinet.

Yeah, we probably should have painted the bottom as well….but it will be ok for now.  After that I screwed our chunk of counter top to it and we now have a very stable and sturdy cabinet for darkroom supplies, I do have to scrape the paint off the hinges still:

Cabinet Installed!

I still need to trim the shims I used to level it…but hey at least I did level it!

Finally I made one more upgrade to the laundry room / dining room door to seal some final light leaks there:

I still have to paint it but it seems to block out the last of the light leaks quite effectively!  Oh yeah, we also put one of the safelight bulbs we acquired the past few days into one of the fixtures in the dining room so we have a semi-dark antechamber before entering the real dark room.  The dining room much like the laundry room has more lights than make sense for such a small room.  There’s a “normal” overhead fixture that we never use.  A track light which we never use (where we put the safe bulb) and a big skylight that has a flourscent light in it with a stained glass design under it – which is the light we tend to use the most since it gives the most usable light, makes the stained glass look nice, and lights up our backyard Ficus tree nicely giving some gentle light near the back door so we don’t stub so many toes!

Wow!  What a weekend!  I’m exhausted!  But I’m still going to go try and do a few quick prints tonight to celebrate having the darkroom pretty much “done” and fully usable complete with nice safelights now!

Oh yeah, that’s one last thing I forgot to mention.  The back bedroom was wired kind of odd.  Most of the outlets were half always live and half switched by switches on the wall above them.  I took advantage of that with setting up our safelights.  2 of the switched outlets now control safelights so they’re on wall switches, and the 3rd switched outlet is where I plugged in the extension cord for the vent fan…so it’s on a switch as well.  This winter when I rewire this part of the house the fan will get it’s own switch in the laundry room – but for now at least it has a switch!

It happened again.

Read on for more details, more photos, and something completely different.

So yeah, last night we had a bit of a storm blow through.  44MPH gusts I was told.  we knew the tarp was going to need replacement soon, its color was fading quick.  But I really thought it had one or two more storms in it still.  Based on where it tore I’m guessing the two small holes were enough to seed it’s destruction.  The TV antenna had fallen a few weeks ago in a wind storm.  I knew it was going to go since the wood is real soft on the side of the house there and the biggest screws I had didn’t seem quite big enough to hold it.  Need to get some good lag bolts and maybe a bit of epoxy to stregthen the old wood there as well before I put it back up.  It did move in the storm last night but I suspect that was more due to the tarp pulling it around than it tearing up the tarp.

Torn and shredded

Other view

Long view

On the plus side the cheap tarp we put up to replace the last torn original tarp held up just great.  But when I went up to the store we got that one at today the price had jumped from $37 to $50   And they can’t blame gas prices either since it looks like it has been sitting on the shelf since we bought that last one.  They only have one left though so I guess I should bite the bullet and go buy it.  Their tarp selection was much more limited this time than last despite the higher prices.

The storm also took out my new flag which I didn’t have time to take down first

Twisted 90 degrees and mangled.

Up is actually to the left in this photo…I forgot to rotate it before uploading and it appears the gallery in wordpress won’t let me rotate   The wind was strong enough to crack the wood and pull the screws out as well as mangle and bend the metal flag mount.

Up is up in this one.

There we go, with up facing up in this photo it’s a little more obvious what the damage was like.  I noticed nicer heavy cast flat mounts at Walmart the other day so I’ll probably get one of those as a replacement.  May have to get a friend with a welder help me make something a bit sturdier than my wooden insert though.

At least the light still works!

Now, as promised something completely different:

Softrock+Xtall v6.3 RX/TX

Backside, the Si570 is the silver chip near the center.

This is my latest little electronics project.  It’s a SoftRock+Xtall v6.3 created by Tony Parks KB9YIG.  It’s a software definced all band amateur radio receiver and 1 watt transmitter.  It’s only partly constructed in this photo…I’ll have finished photos up by the end of the weekend I hope.  The small daughter board is one of the 4 RX filter modules that have to be changed for various bands.  It comes with modules for 160m , 40/80m, 30/20/15m and the final for 15/12/10m.  Pictured is the 40/80 filter.   I probably won’t bother to bulid the 160m filter since I have no antenna for that band and no plans for one.  I build the 40/80 first since I the 30/20/15 and 15/12/10 modules are the ones I care most about so I figured I’d do the one I don’t care about first for practice.

Yes, I do already have 3 other softrock RX/TX kits and a couple of RX only kits.  I have the original 3 board stack that upgraded a v6.1 for 40/80m and a v6.2 for 20m that is still waiting for me to wind the last 7 inductors (and has been waiting nearly a year…I need to finish that.)  What makes this new one so much nifitier though is that little silver chip on the bottom – the Si570.  The Si570 is a programmable oscilator that gives this version of the SR full frequency agility.  Instead of being locked to 48khz on either side of the crystal this one can be tuned just about anywhere in the HF bands I could want.  It could theoretically even get up to 6m and possibly even 2m – but the switches that make up the mixer in the SR wouldn’t work at those frequencies so other methods would have to be employed.

The other reason I built the 40/80m RX filter first is that the kit only ships with the 40/80m TX PA and Filter.  The other PAF kits are still being tested to make sure they meet FCC requirements but should ship soon.  I’m also anxiously awaiting the new USB kit which I’ve pre-ordered.

You see, while the Si570 is programable there was no connection to the computer to command it in the v6.3 design.  Instead there’s a small microcontroller (a pic to be exact) right next to the 4 dip switches.  The 4 switches can be changed aroudn to select 1 of 16 different frequencies that the pic will command the Si570 to hold.  The USB kit will replace the pic microconroller with another small daughterboard which provides an i2c bus allowing a USB connection to the PC to command the Si570 giving full tuning ability.  The USB kit also gives a serial port which can be used to control the PTT line making hooking the SR to the computer much simpler.  You still need stereo audio in/out for the SR as well as audio out and mic in (necessitating either two sound cards or a 4 channel card like the Delta 44 I recently gave my dad due to the lack of 64bit Vista drivers) but overall the connections to the computer become much simpler and you get better frequency control.

I still have to finish assembling the PAF board and tuning this setup….so that’s on deck for this weekend.  Not a big hurry though since I’m holding out for the 20m PAF and the USB kit which should be here sometime in September.

Better exposure, but neg was damaged.

I loaded up the other exposure of the old canal, decided to try a vertical crop instead of the native square (in hopes of cropping out some of the falloff in the corners caused by the lubitel) and after a quick test strip did a test print.  That’s it above.  As usual my scanner mangled it pretty good – one day I’ll find a way to get that scanner to reproduce images accurately instead of trying to “correct” them.  The good news is that as I suspected the exposure is MUCH better on this frame and the tones were very close to where I wanted them printed on #2.  The bad news though far outweights that.  The image is soft, my focus wasn’t quite where I wanted it unlike the other slightly underexposed image.  And then there’s the squiggle.

It was a piece of hair.  And sadly it wasn’t just on the negative, it was IN the negative, actually embedded into the emulsion   Removing the hair was easy enough – but once removed it left a canyon in the emulsion.  It was either there from the factory (unlikely), got onto the film when I was rolling it onto the spool for processing (fairly likely given how deeply it was embedded) or got there when the film was still wet and hung to dry (also very likely given our excitement over the first roll of film processed in the new house and our eagerness to inspect it.)

Had it been damage on the other side of the negative a little nose grease or no scratch would have been able to cover it.  But alas, a deep wound to the emulsion like this is far more grave.  Way too big to spot out.  I could correct it in photoshop…but I’m not looking for a digital solution here.  So this neg is effectively trash

If it wasn’t for the focus being a bit off I’d be kind of bummed.  But as it is I guess it’s just and excuse to go back out there again for some shooting sometime.

The other quick print I did was far more gratifying.  The scene itself isn’t all that great…but the exposure was quite nice, it was remarkably sharp for the equipment used, and the print came out almost exactly as I had visualized it which was gratifying:

Lizard sunning on a weathered post.

Of course as usual my scanner has “corrected” the print and thrown off the original tones.  Contrast has been increased, subtleties have been lost, and sharpness and detail were lost to the scanner as well.  But it felt good to get a print Iw as happy with after just one test – even if the image itself isn’t all that great!

Hopefully this weekend we’ll find time to put light to film and get some negatives I’m a little more excited about printing.  Saturday we’re going to a local couples house to see if we are interested in any of their old darkroom equipment so with luck I’ll be able to pick up a safelight and printing won’t be quite as much of a chore anymore.

Assuming of course that I finish installing our vent fan and track down whatever has mysteriously caused two electrical circuits in our backyard to suddenly fail at the same time

Laguna Dam - abandoned sluiceway

Read on for details!

First stop of course was our new local camera shop “Backyard Photography” in downtown Yuma. We were glad to see they had a number of customers in the store when we showed up, and they were glad to see us having seen Amy’s blog about them on the Sun’s website.  They apologized again for not having safelights in stock, they almost ordered for their initial stock – but held back at the last minute.  It sounds like they’re also going to get in some 120 film which I’m looking forward to.

While I preferred Ilford films back when I last shot film – I never used the Ilford developers normally using T-max developer, since the local store is still working on getting setup with Kodak this was a good chance for me to try some Ilford developers so I picked up some ID-11 and Perceptol film developers. The fixer and stop we bought last week can be used for both film and paper (just a different dilution) so we didn’t need any more of that. Dug out my old film tanks…and decided to expose some emulsion!

But I didn’t want to just shoot 35mm roll film. And having recently sold my 4×5 monorail didn’t have that as an option (though the cash from selling it did help us make the down payment to afford the house we bought and love so dearly so it was still a good call…I do have a 4×5 field view still…but it needs a new shutter.) I have a 120 Holga but it’s got a polaroid back on it and I don’t know where the original film back is right now. Plus it’s a Holga…super cheap plastic lens, no reliable way to focus, and lots of light leaks.

Amy and I also have a decent collection of older cameras a few of which will take 120 roll film…but I opted instead to dust off another “toy” camera that I’ve always had a lot of fun with. The Lubitel 166, a slight step up from the Holga. Like the Holga it’s still made of plastic, and has some light leaks. Unlike the Holga it has a real glass lens, a real shutter and aperture and can actually take some halfway decent photos. It is kind of tough to focus accurately though and with no light meter getting a good exposure takes a good bit of experience. But the effect can still be quite nice for the right subject matter.

Plus I really like working in the 6cmx6cm square format and the viewfinder is a lot like a view camera with everything backwards which gets me thinking a bit more out of the box and looking at things differently. Being a TLR (twin lens reflex) you don’t see the exact image that the film sees like you do with a SLR (Single Lens Reflex) but you get a much more accurate representation than you would with a rangefinder camera like the Holga.

I only had one roll of 120 film left though…it was a roll of Ilford FP4+ (125iso/asa) which expired back in 1998 and has been stored quite poorly in the bottom of a box ever since. But what the heck. Let’s give it a go!

We trekked up to Mittrey lake and Laguna dam road to take some photos of an abandoned part of the Laguna dam – also known as the Swastika dam. This was the first dam built across the Colorado river back in 1905 by the Bureau of Reclamation – at the time knows as the ” U.S. Reclamation Service” who had adopted the swastika as their emblem (well before it came to have the negative connections many of us associate with it now.) Read the link for more details about this interesting old bridge and dam.

Here’s some shots I took back in 2005 where you can see some of the swastikas….I didn’t take any yesterday that show them:

Canal Turnouts on AZ side at Laguna Dam

"Swastika Bridge" at Laguna Dam

Anyway, I’m getting off track! The point is we went up there and snapped some shots…we tried to make it up to the Imperial dam…but by the time we got there the sun had dipped behind the mountains and the light was fading and flat. And I only had 1 exposure left – oddly enough I managed to overexpose it trying to compensate for the fading light.

Once we got home, Amy mixed up the ID-11 developer and some film strength fixer while I cooked dinner. After we ate I dug in on processing some film and the results were not too shabby at all considering the quality of film and camera I had on hand.

Here’s the proof sheets I whipped up:

The lower right was my first exposure….not having used the Lubitel in a couple of years I got the self timer and shutter cocking mechanism mixed up and wound up doing a several second exposure by mistake…oops. The shot above that shows what can happen when you’re used to a SLR but switch to a TLR – I thought I had positioned the camera to shoot through the fence. Though I kind of like the effect I ended up with having the fence positioned like that. The other two exposures – the top one was exposed according to the reading I got with my light meter. The lower one I tweaked the exposure a bit to get the effect I was looking for – apparently I still remember a thing or two as it seems to have come out just like I planned. If you view the big version you may be able to see the little lizard sitting on the post who blended in to the point I almost didn’t notice him.

Oh and on all of these – please excuse the dust – my scanner sucks and is pretty dusty right now. I tried cleaning it off but it’s still bad. And the glossy paper tends to cause reflections on this scanner as well. Trust me when I say the original prints look much better.

The second contact sheet from this roll:

Amy makes a cameo appearance in the shot in the upper left, but she’s way down at the end of that wall and very small.  The two in the lower left were once the light was fading, the “no parking” sign was up at Imperial dam. I ended up picking the image on the lower right to try doing a print of – the frame at the top of the right column was a better exposure…but I liked the framing of the lower one better and wanted to print a full frame.

My first test print was a little flat – the scan distorts the tones somewhat, and makes it look a bit closer to what I was going for in the shadows…but the highlights look a lot flatter in the scan than they do in real life:

Since I liked the highlights on that first print I stuck with the same exposure but went from a 2 contrast up to a 3.5 contrast to bring in the shadows…but that was going too far:

3rd try I stepped back to about a 2.75 (I use a color enlarger so I can dial in variable contrast filtration more without having to do the 1/2 value steps you get with tradional multi-grade filters.) But I also stepped up the exposure just a hair since the highlights were looking a little weak on the previous two (or so I thought…once they fully dried I realized I was closer than I thought.)

Again – the scanner is throwing off the tones on these a bit but you should be able to see how the contrast is inbetween the last two.

No good final prints out of this session…but that’s mainly due to me getting frustrated working without a safelight and loosing my patience in the complete dark. Once I get a safelight setup (and a better exhaust fan) I’ll probably switch to the other neg of this scene and do a good final print that I’ll give to the local shop as thanks for being there and inspiring me to get back into the darkroom.

The first order of buisness was decided where to do it.  We needed water and a room that could easily be made dark.  Well, our laundry room almost fits the bill.  It has water, but no counter space, and there was a BIG gap under the one door.  But no windows.

The room on the other side of the laundry room, our 3rd bedroom and future master suite, only has one window.  It also has its own A/C unit which works better than the main house unit, and two desks.  One of which was covered with boxes.

So we decided to use both rooms.  The laundry room would be the “wet side” of the darkroom while the bedroom would be the “Dry Side”.  It’s not idea.  There’s dryer lint to contend with in the laundry room, and the bedroom is where the dog door is so there’s lots of fur in there.  It’s also carpeted and kind of big to try and keep dust free for an idea darkroom.  But for occasional use it will be just fine.  With that decided the big question was…how to make the rooms dark!

So a quick trip to Lowes to look for inspiration.  I figure eventually I’ll make a custom blackout block for the window out of some styrofoam, weather stripping and aluminum foil.  But for now the aluminum foil and a roll of foil tape did the job quite nicely.  The dog door we just put it’s blocker panel in and toss a towel over it to take care of the small final leaks.

The gap under the laundry room door took a bit more work.  But with a piece of 1/2″ poplar and a piece of 1/4″ poplar I was able to extend the door.  It still needs some finish sanding and paint but works great!  A bit of weather stripping and a small fox to the striker plate (that door never latched before) and the door is almost completely light proof:

Upgraded to fill the gap!

We cleared the boxes off the other table, which resulted in the final empty bookshelf back there finally being filled with books.  And then setup my old Durst:

My old Durst all setup.

It’s a little low for my tastes…but Amy likes being able to sit on the bed while working and I can live working from my knees as often as I print anymore.  You’ll also notice the motel style A/C unit in the background, with some more foil tape we used to seal up the light leaks around it.

I also re-installed the shelf that was in the laundry room.  We had to take it out to make room for the laundry tub.  But I cut it down to fit the remaining space (slightly overlapping the tub so things can drain off of it into the tub) and remounted it.  I wouldn’t lean on it or put anything heavy on it…but it can support a few trays or my Jobo processor just fine:

All set up and working!

Space is tight…and the trays aren’t setup optimally.  That’s developer in front, Stop in the corner, fix on the right and improvised wash in the tub.  I also only had 2 real trays on me…but for $7 walmart had a Sterlite 3 drawer organizer and the drawers make very handy trays!  The 2l bottles were also the cheapest option we found for holding the chemicals – $.67 each though, it was cheaper to dump out the soda than to buy real bottles and they work just fine for us.

On the other side of the laundry room I hung a bit of kite string which we use as a drying line.  We both cranked out a quick print or two and it does indeed work.  But without a safelight it’s very difficult to work in there.  And we need a better processing timer.  But with a bit more organization, a few things shipped out from my old darkroom at my parents house and a bit more time….it will be quite nice.

Now if we can just get the dog to decide if she wants to be in or out while we print

But Amy’s most recent duet of posts on her blog seem worth of mention.  So read on for my thoughts about the fickleness of freebies and whatever else I manage to bang out before accepting I’ve spent enough time and need to get back to using the keyboard for something more productive!

I don’t think Amy is trying to turn her blog into a mini-craigs list, it’s likely just a coincidence that several things in need of new homes showed up at the same time.  It started with her plea to steal this tree from our front yard.  There’s nothing wrong with the tree in question, it’s just not in a very good location.  Directly under a 4″ diameter branch of a nearby larger tree is not the kind of place most people would think is an appropriate location for a palm tree.  Or at least so I would assume.  The man we bought our house from however is not one to follow such norms.  So we have a quite lovely 5 or 6 foot tall palm growing directly under a main limb of our palo verde tree in the front yard.  Were this the only example of such questionable arbor abuse I would not think much of it … but for the previous owner of our house it seems to have been a common theme.

You may recall the case of the superfluous ficus that I mentioned in passing just after starting this blog.  That tree is now growing quite happily in our Friend J’s backyard – which is quite an improvement over it’s attempts to cling to life in the combined shade of our RV shade and primary Ficus.  Being hastily planted and poorly staked so the winds which have been quite frequent this year often left it leaning at rather un-treelike angles something had to be done.  But it’s not the only victim of over planting in our yard.

No, we have a number of questionably placed trees.  The euclyptus next to our shed which has developed a 90 degree bend in it’s trunk in an attempt to reach the sun.  The plant which may be a tree or perhaps a woody shrub which has grown far larger than one would usually classify as a shrub at the end of our driveway (just this weekend we discovered that it has lovely purple flowers) which much like the superfluous ficus and bent eucalyptus is overpowered by the alpha ficus.  And another similar tree between my office and the rv shade – a location which all but ensures it never sees any direct sun.

But most poorly placed of all of these is the small braided tree growing outside our living room window.  Planted in a small opening in the driveway it is located under both our front porch and our carport.  Yes, there is a 4″ or so gap between the two which the tree may someday manage to escape through.  But overall it seems to me that it’s a horribly poorly thought out planting.

We’ve offered these trees up to our cadre of friends but only the one lone ficus found a home so far.  The palm has had some interest, but not enough for anyone to take up a shovel and free it from our yard yet.  So Amy put out a public offering of “Free tree” on her well publicized blog.  Followed quickly (possibly the shortest time yet between two posts by Amy) by an offering of free kittens found in her offices AC system.

This has taught me a valuable lesson.  While one would assume that the week which includes earth day would be an ideal time to give away a free tree – it seems small and fuzzy is still far more popular.  In a little under 3 hours the cute and fuzzy kittens all had homes while it wasn’t until just a few minutes ago, 3 days after the offer was made, that someone decided to take us up on the free tree.  Of course they won’t be back to dig it up until sunday, and with the history of tree home offers I’ve hard recently I won’t count this tree as saved until there’s a hole in our yard waiting for me to fill it with something.  Perhaps if we put fur on the tree trunks it would make them cute enough to be adoptable.

In other news my experiments with home coffee roasting continue.  As I type this I am preparing to try my first cut of the Eithopian beans I got in my initial order.  I’m trying to sample each of the growing regions with my first few batches.  I started with the very common Columbian.  It was a good cup of coffee, but didn’t really stand out in any way to me.  Very fresh and tasty…but kind of seemed like it should be in a white can with black block letters spelling COFFEE across it.  Wanting something more exciting I next tried an Indonesian (Sulawesi to be specific) which I found to be VERY enjoyable.  Quite a few interesting flavors in the cup yet in some ways also milder.  For my 3rd batch I tried a batch of beans from Peru which I also quite enjoyed, more like the Sulawesi than the Columbian but still very unique.

So for my current batch I continent hopped over to Africa, the only African bean included in this batch and Eithopian.  I haven’t finished the cup yet, but have sampled it.  I’m finding it to be more enjoyable than I expected based on it’s description and the smell of the roasted beans.  Incidentally I’ve been roasting everything to a full city roast (or as close as I can get with my limited experience) so that the flavor of the roast won’t overpower the flavor of the beans.  The cup is much less bitter than I expected from it’s description – but it doesn’t seem to have the depth of flavors that the Indonesian and Peruvian offerings did.

I still have photos and info to share about our yard projects, but those will have to wait for another time.  I’ve covered enough territory in this post and really need to get back to work.