Leather coverings
This page has assorted notes on the use of leather and leather substitutes for restoring the exterior of cameras, mainly older ones. I am not an expert leather-worker, so this should be seen as a rather humble work in progress, for which further ideas are welcome. I hope to add more as time passes and experiences, good and bad, come my way.
Leather or leathercloth?
I suspect that "leatherette" may be a trade mark, but with it I also mean the whole family of leather substitutes which consist of a woven base covered with a coating to resemble leather, which come in a myriad of colours and textures. For our purposes, most of them can immediately be discounted; those made for furnishings, bags, shoes etc. are too thick and too stretchy to go on the exterior of a camera.
Our constant battle is to find a covering material which matches the original as well as possible. That means the bottom end of the thickness range (in real or artificial leather), and a relatively "hard" surface. This may seem odd; however, thin soft leather may be delightful for a pair of fine gloves, but feels quite wrong on a camera. I did this once and regretted it. Once we have chosen a sufficiently thin material - and that usually means 0.5mm (20 thousandths of an inch) or less - it is bound to be flexible. But we don't want it either elastic when under some tension, or soft to the touch when stuck down.
A world containing the kind of material we need is bookbinding, as binders making beautiful books have the same needs. They have suppliers of course, and here are a couple in Britain who have helped me find what I needed:
Artificial leather - www.ratchford.co.uk/product/black-leathercloth/ - and many other materials too.
Real leather - www.hewitonline.com from whom I bought black hard-grain skiver about 0.4mm thick, though they have many others, and as it's a natural product you need to see samples of what is available from time to time.
My preference is to use a material as close as possible to the original, not just in appearance but in substance. So if the original covering was real leather, so should its replacement be. Most camera manufacturers in the 20th century, however, used substitutes, and there is nothing wrong - indeed I think it right - to follow their lead. I recognise though that the actual chemical composition of the current substitute will be quite different from the original, even if the structure (fabric+coating) seems the same.
Our constant battle is to find a covering material which matches the original as well as possible. That means the bottom end of the thickness range (in real or artificial leather), and a relatively "hard" surface. This may seem odd; however, thin soft leather may be delightful for a pair of fine gloves, but feels quite wrong on a camera. I did this once and regretted it. Once we have chosen a sufficiently thin material - and that usually means 0.5mm (20 thousandths of an inch) or less - it is bound to be flexible. But we don't want it either elastic when under some tension, or soft to the touch when stuck down.
A world containing the kind of material we need is bookbinding, as binders making beautiful books have the same needs. They have suppliers of course, and here are a couple in Britain who have helped me find what I needed:
Artificial leather - www.ratchford.co.uk/product/black-leathercloth/ - and many other materials too.
Real leather - www.hewitonline.com from whom I bought black hard-grain skiver about 0.4mm thick, though they have many others, and as it's a natural product you need to see samples of what is available from time to time.
My preference is to use a material as close as possible to the original, not just in appearance but in substance. So if the original covering was real leather, so should its replacement be. Most camera manufacturers in the 20th century, however, used substitutes, and there is nothing wrong - indeed I think it right - to follow their lead. I recognise though that the actual chemical composition of the current substitute will be quite different from the original, even if the structure (fabric+coating) seems the same.
Making those decorative lines on leather
|
Look at any leather-covered camera and you will likely find that lines or other decoration have been drawn or marked into the surface. This is traditionally done both for its decorative effect and to stabilise the leather, discouraging it from failing at the edge. How is it done?
The process is called creasing, and it is done with a heated "iron" - a metal tool with a smooth blunt blade, heated with a spirit lamp or other convenient heat source. A typical temperature is around 120°C - enough to make a water drop sizzle but not too fiercely. It is drawn over the leather surface by hand with moderate pressure, guided either by a ruler - or for edges, a typical tool has a built-in adjustable guide to keep the mark a fixed space from the edge. Something like this should be possible for leathercloth too, but the temperature needed would likely be a lot lower, and you should experiment on some scrap first. |
|
Impressing a logo
|
Here is a challenge I faced recently for the first time. I have been working on an Adams Idento - a folding plate camera from about 1905, from a top maker of the day, but a camera which has fallen on hard times. The original covering is leather, but large parts of it were missing and what was left was frayed, chipped and worn. I needed to replace it all, using real leather. A particular problem is that the manufacturer had stamped the model name in gold into the leather surface. I decided to have a go at reproducing this artwork in the new covering.
The principle of "debossing" is like creasing - a suitable die is heated and pressed into the surface to make a mark, which compresses and flattens the leather surface at the point where the die contacts the leather. By the way, "debossing" is the converse of "embossing" and describes a depressed surface as opposed to a raised. I read up a good deal on the topic, of which this was the most useful. If your camera has just an impressed mark, this is all you will need to do. In my case, though, it needed to be both impressed and gilded. There is a modern process called hot foil stamping, which seems to be what we need. However, I found I needed to wander off-track to get the necessary effect. Hot foil stamping would probably work if you were able to obtain a die with deep enough relief - i.e. with the indenting surface standing far enough proud of the base of the die. This could cost a lot of money for the die, and I wanted to keep the cost down - after all, the plan is not to make a thousand copies! I managed to get a reasonable photo of the original impressed logo, and use it in Photoshop to guide a process of drawing in a layer on top of the photo, to produce the necessary artwork. To make a die you need a pure black/white image at 1200dpi, which you send to a diemaker. They convert this into metal; the cheapest by a big margin is magnesium, and for my little die I paid about £25 all-in from www.profoil.com. It came the next day - excellent service! With my new die I could certainly make "blind stamps" - a debossed impression without colour or gold. I got a small piece of hot stamping foil in gold - which I think is actually gold-coloured aluminium - and tried to impress the logo into the leather. You heat the die with a spirit lamp just like the creasing iron, and to a similar temperature. You also need a means of applying pressure; I used a little arbor press that I already had, but I think it would not be too hard to improvise something else, even a suitably judged tap with a hammer. The necessary contact time is only a second or so. Sadly though, the die presses deep enough into the surface of even thin leather that the image "spreads" too far, and becomes blurred. So I moved on, and had better success with gold leaf. This is a tricky material to handle, and it is worth reading up on it before starting. I already had some in stock, but it is not terrifically expensive and you don't need much. The evolved process is quite simple, and used the same die: 1. Heat the die to about 120°C, and impress a blind stamp into your leather (good firm pressure, a few seconds). Have the leather taped down in a fixed position and leave it there so that you can later press the die into the same place again. 2. Paint a shellac varnish over the impressed mark - just overall, no need to follow the lines. I tried several varnishes including regular French Polish, they all worked but I but got best results with Rustin's Clear Metal Lacquer. Let it dry for 24 hours. 3. Lay gold leaf loose over the impressed mark, again you just need to make sure the whole area is covered. 4. Heat the die to about 100°C, i.e. a bit cooler than last time, and re-impress in the same spot with lighter pressure for just 1 second. 5. After a few moments cooling you can take a soft paintbrush and brush away the gold. It will break up and turn to dust/flakes except where the shellac has made it stick to the leather. I found a combination of brushing and blowing with low-pressure compressed air (airbrush nozzle) worked particularly well, but just a brush will do. 6. Careful tidying-up with a cotton bud dampened with methylated spirit is possible if needed. 7. A coat of clear shellac varnish over the whole leather surface including the gold will help to seal it in. |
Above - the original; below - drawing for the die.
The magnesium die, fixed to a piece of scrap wood.
The result is not as well defined as the original, but is probably as good as can be done with this type of die. In particular, the fine detail of the crown is not coming out, and a different die-making process might do better. However, at a normal viewing distance even this looks pretty reasonable!
|