Prototype 3 Build - Days 3, 4, 5, 6. . .

The past four days just flew by! Due to some schedule snafus, the only progress made on the prototype was finishing of the main components in Minwax Polycrylic. It's not perfect, but right now we have a pretty high build of semi-gloss finish, with a few spots of pooling and dust inclusions. Now we can continue with final assembly of the camera body.

Relegated to a lonely corner of the house, Duo is taking shape atop a copy of The Beacon, everyone's favorite collegiate newspaper. . .

Besides getting as many as 7 or 8 coats of polyurethane, some key interfaces get painted in flat black acrylic, including the inside of the finder hood.

And the Polaroid / Roll Film interface. . . 

And the back of the front standard, and part of the body. It looks pretty messy, but nobody's ever going to see this part of the camera anyway.

We also add these four little feet on the bottom. 

Most of the work on the bellows was also completed. Duo uses two bellows - an inner set and outer set. The outer set is a combination of water-resistant fabric and matte black paper, while the inner set is only paper. The outer set protects the internals of the camera from dust, moisture, and most light intrusion. The inner set shields only the light path of the taking lens. Essentially we end up with two layers that are together impermeable to dust, moisture, and light. Making bellows seems like a daunting task, but is really one that is not all that difficult, given a little bit of practice and patience.

Outer Bellows

 Here we have some heavy black paper (4" x 20.75" and about 110-130GSM). I've scored the paper by drawing a pattern on it with a regular mechanical pencil. The pattern will be included in the kit.

Then we fold it up! No gluing yet. This took about 15 minutes (or less than one episode of The Daily Show). I'll post a video on folding bellows.

Here's what it looks like from the side. We want the creases to be very well defined.

Next we flatten the paper and glue on our fabric, in this case navy blue water resistant fabric. Three of the edges get folded over onto the backside, as shown above. I use "3M Super 77" spray glue to adhere the fabric to the paper, then do the overlap with regular white glue. It helps to put some pressure on the fabric while waiting for the glue to cure, so I used a stack of textbooks for that.

Then we glue the two ends together. Again, clamping force and patience is key. I waited overnight for this glue joint to cure.

Folded up again. Having the paper creased before gluing it to the fabric helps keep the bellows looking nice and sharp. There's a few stray threads and glue marks around the ends, but they get glued to the front standard and body - so no need to fret.

And here's how it fits on the camera (no glue yet). To get the bellows as flat and sharply creased as possible, I leave it under a stack of ten-or-so textbooks for a few hours.

Inner Bellows

Okay, now for round two! This time we have twice the number of folds, at half the width - so a little more time consuming this time. We start by drawing the horizontal lines, 1/4" apart.

 Then the vertical lines, at intervals defined by a pattern.

We start to add diagonal lines, alternating each time.

Finished! Now we cut it out and fold it up.

Well, that escalated quickly. Again, we'll stick it under a stack of books to flatten it out.