Eastman Kodak produced many sizes of the Folding Pocket Kodak on a production line basis involving standardized sub assemblies being brought together, long before Henry Ford has been generally credited with introducing the Production line. George Eastman was in the business of selling film, the more cameras out there taking pictures, the more film you sell. Accordingly Eastman created cameras that could be used by the average person, some basic - others allowing full control. The first Folding Pocket Kodak materialized in 1899 and the construction design evolved until Kodak settled on the method illustrated by this example dating from around 1910, although the same basic construction appeared around 1904.

For these vertical folding cameras, Kodak used two mahogany wood sides, routed out with grooves into which pressed a folded aluminium assembly to form the main body. The backs were from rolled aluminium to complete the closure and the front panel was also pressed sheet aluminium riveted to the body via a brass hinge. Two adjustable struts set the front panel at exactly the right position to form the lens bed when open. This method was used through to the end of the 1920s when Kodak progressively switched to all metal construction. It was quite some undertaking as many skills and trades were employed to create these cameras.

Woodworking, coarse leather treatment, embossing and dyeing, fine leather treatment for bellows plus linen lining and stiffener creation, sheet aluminium stamping and folding, sheet brass stamping and folding, wire forming, brass bar forming, brass casting, brass turning, paint finishing, varnishing, chemical blacking and electro plating, this and more was all required to produce one of the thousands of FPKs turned out by Kodak. So this restoration will be a celebration of all that was put into one of these plentiful Kodaks.

At left is the camera as received, mostly complete but with a host of problems commonly found with this type of construction plus some very mangled bellows.

Enough looking, lets get this old Kodak back up and running. Hmmm, Kodak rot.

So first up is a very common issue with these old Folding Kodaks, although not unique to Kodak. The aluminium oxidizes very happily. Now to be fair, the camera is well over a century old and has outlived the film it was designed for, so I don't think we'll be sending it back under warrantee. But if we want it to be presentable in another century, we'll have to stop this from progressing further. Most cameras that have leather over aluminium will develop this corrosion in time. Aluminium is looking for any excuse to rot and a nice porous covering that will hold damp, chemicals in the adhesive and air is all it needs. It takes the form of a hard white powder, that is highly abrasive, beneath which will be pits in the metal. It creeps under the leather breaking down the adhesive connection as it goes. It's betrayed by an irregular lumpy appearance and a crunching sound if you squeeze the area. Normally the adhesion is so well broken down that the whole covering can be removed with little encouragement. I generally soak it off though in distilled water as this makes the process gentler and eases the removal of the adhesive which is mildly water soluble on Kodaks. Also scraping the adhesive off the back of the leather when wet stretches it back to the original dimensions, as the aluminium oxide tends to shrink it somewhat.

Now for some of the restoration decisions. This is the inside of the back, there is mild corrosion on the copper pressure plates and it does look a little tatty. Ordinarily, I'd clean it up and polish off the corrosion leaving the original finish as it is. But in this case I already know that the rest of the body will need to come apart, brutal treatment that will require refinishing the inner aluminium tray, making this part look rather alien when the camera is completed. Accordingly it will be repainted, entailing de riveting the blanking plate for the red window. Also, the intention is to have this camera functioning again, so any source of dust and flaking paint should be removed.

These FPKs were available with two backs, one with a simple pressure plate and red window or this version. This has a sliding blanking plate and pressure rails to keep roll film flat against the focal plane edge, but alternatively allow a single glass photographic plate to be held in place for a one off photograph to be taken.

This image from one of the two damaged examples was useful too. Here you can see why this design is a bit of a failure. Only supported one side, the focus stop gets folded flat should the user run the lensboard out a tad vigorously against it. Brass doesn't like being bent beyond it's elastic limits and any attempt to bend it straight is likely to snap it off... which is presumably what happened to ours.

But now I have enough information to sort this out.

Test fitting to the mounting plate after it had been cleaned of corrosion. The spring that closes the lever is a surprisingly feisty little fellow. I'm not ashamed to say it took several attempts and a watery eye following a punctured thumb before I got the little (insert preferred expletive) where it belonged.

Then I had to take it all apart again to paint it. Sigh, can anyone explain why I do this.

The solution is to tie a piece of cotton through the spring anchor to pull it around under tension before sliding the lever, but my advice is... if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The pin looks copper but is actually steel, Kodak went to the effort of nickel plating it with a copper intermediate layer, they weren't cutting corners back in those days. It's a tiny part really, but the effort expended on it when manufactured is quite inspiring. It deserved to be repaired, even if the design is fundamentally rubbish.

Now, those bellows. Ugh. One of the issues with large bellows cameras is the volume of air required to be sucked in when opened. Opening them too rapidly causes a number of issues, it can suck the film into the bellows ruining the focus for that shot, it sucks in dust that ends up plastered all over the film producing little clear spots on the negative and it can suck the pleats flat. (Actually it's atmospheric pressure pushing them flat according to my inner pedant). If you can't open the camera to pop the pleats back straight due to it being loaded with film, you may be tempted to close it up with them out of place... resulting in the mess this poor old thing has. Earlier examples of the FPK 3A B-4 had a screw on focal plane plate that held the bellows in place, making removal for repair easy, just like the one you see here. Later ones were held in with fold over tabs and are damn near impossible to get out. They were never intended to be, in fairness.

Guess which one ours is. Clue... the photo ain't the subject of this restoration.

The entire body will need to come apart if those bellows are going to get straightened up. The card stiffeners are clearly crushed and it's been sat closed with the lens rise set high for decades. This is going to get messy, the squeamish should look away now.

As the bellows are permanently attached to the inner tray, (itself screwed and tied with tie rods to the mahogany sides with the heads hidden under the leather covering), dismantling is a drastic step. The two ends are formed from rolled aluminium that suffers all the same problems as the back, so the leather needed to come off anyway, revealing the screw heads. The leather came off readily as corrosion was doing its thing. The leather won't come off the wood though, not a chance, don't try. Unfortunately there are two tie rods that are essential in preventing the sides from springing. One end of each rod is folded over, the other is threaded to a spreader disc. This disc needs to be excavated by slicing a cross in the leather where it exits on the side with the tripod mount. The centre is beneath the embossed decoration where it meets in a point by the film pintle surround. You'll know you found it as when you tease the leather back you'll discover a white disc let into the dark mahogany. This is actually a plaster of Paris in fill, the threaded disc is buried below. Dig it out and unscrew. I told you it was going to get messy. You can see the tie rods passing behind the film rollers from inside to give you a further clue, should you be bonkers enough to try. If you feel tempted to cut them to avoid damaging the leather, don't! I promise you, the camera will never close properly without them, they are in considerable tension, keeping the sides from springing.

I did take some images of the woodwork carnage, but seem to have deleted them. Maybe it was just too terrible an image to show.

Your reward for this carnage is the liberated aluminium inner tray with the attached bellows, plus a pile of parts you took off along the way...

The aluminium tabs holding the rear bellows pleats and metal support will need to be bent backwards. Some will snap, but it doesn't matter as they will all snap if you attempt to bend them back. The only solution is to attach the bellows post repair with adhesive or resort to the earlier method used by Kodak and use screws, which is our intention. Despite the mixed materials used the tolerances are pretty fine, there being very little room for error centering the bellows over the inner tray, leaving just sufficient to set into the routed slots in the side panels. The previously mentioned tie rods also apply a clamping force to the bellows when tightened up.

So at this stage I decided the FPKs photographic days were behind it and I would tidy it up and restore it cosmetically since the lens was pretty far gone too. It was a shame as I was hoping the Koilos shutter would get a chance to perform again. To this end I created a bellows stretcher to fit exactly, using the dimensions of the metal plates mounted back and front as the starting points, as these obviously don't shrink. Once the lining was installed the card stiffeners that couldn't be saved were replaced and the whole assembly straightened out. This is contrary to the order it was made. From the evidence uncovered during this process, during manufacture the inner lining was stretched over a circular cone whilst the seam was glued. The stiffeners were glued in situ onto the leather, which was then slid over the lining to attach to the still wet rubber light sealant before its own offset seam was glued shut.

Sadly all this effort was for nought, as it subsequently transpired that the lining and leather outer had shrunk and distorted in completely different directions and no amount of effort could get the memory of the original pleat creases to align.

However, the lining has been saved, and will serve as an illustration to how these old bellows are constructed as it's an object few will have seen.

Having failed to save the inner, now left me with a dilemma. The leather outer was in much worse condition than originally thought, with many holes. If I was going to save any part of it, it ought be the visible part I thought. One of the misfolds had cracked the skin for a considerable length. So I created a highly unorthodox solution and stretched a sheet of thin but strong brown paper over a board, in much the same way as you'd stretch water colour paper before painting on it. But I used black Indian ink instead of water. I then thinned some PVA and coated the rear of the leather skin before rolling it onto the paper and allowing to dry. As the paper dries it draws taught, until perfectly flat, pulling the leather with it, but supporting it at all the various weak points. This is the stage you see it here. Then it was given a good leather feed and a dose of the appropriate colour Venetian Cream still stretched on the board. When dry it was trimmed around the edge of the board, turned over, and stretched face down, with another coat of Indian ink on the reverse. Finally it was cut off, trimmed to the leather. As this makes it thicker than original I decided against putting a linen liner in, that would only serve to disguise an unorthodox repair, and would stretch the pleats, putting extra strain in the corners for no good reason other than vanity and to hide my embarrassment. The brown paper will hold a crease and support the pleats in much the same way as the individual strips once did, but also serves to seal off all the tiny holes in the skin. So whilst this is unorthodox, externally it is original and the approach will enable a few images to be be made with it.

Something else transpired when looking at the leather. It's clearly far from light proof, a distinct red glow is transmitted through the skin in bright sunlight. From my readings I was lead to believe that the almost universal change from red to black bellows around 1912 was purely a result of fashion. However I now suspect that the rising use of panchromatic films around this time lead to fogging as these films were sensitive to red, whereas the older orthochromatic films were not and it was this that lead to the demise of red bellows. I'll add that to my list of pet theories.

Whilst waiting for the bellows to dry several times, work started on the aluminium shells. These were cleaned of all the corrosion, checked for bends and straightened out as required. Dismantling is a fairly rough process and the aluminium distorts easily needing to be remedied, or it won't align with the routed slots. After this they went into paint. The back panel had a light blow over to freshen it up, the inner tray was completely stripped and resprayed. Kodak did originally spray paint the interior, but the edging was put on by hand after the leather had been applied.

Here the back panel and inner tray are seen straight out of paint with the red window set in place again.

The rear hatch was sprayed over the sides contrary to Kodak practice, and also allowed to go beneath where the leather will go back on later. This is to help prevent the corrosion returning as it tends to creep in from the edges.

The little pieces of waxed gummed paper are also a deviation. These are put there to protect the leather from the rivet heads as they've already worn holes in the covering, but also to deny the aluminium easy access to moisture at a point where it's looking to corrode given half a chance. A blob of black acrylic paint down the hole later will complete the aesthetic. The only thing that holds the red acetate window in place is the leather covering, but here I've given it a helping hand with a gummed paper tab too.

Kodak used the same embossed pattern leather for all the wooden bodied cameras it churned out from the early 1900s until the late 1920s. It's fairly thick and usually responds to treatment well enough to go back on. If small sections need to be repaired a decent match from Hewitts in Edinburgh is available, Levant being the name they give it, if my memory serves me correctly. I bought a whole skin many years ago, and still have enough tp patch a few old folding Kodaks yet. But this example didn't need any major patches, just the short pieces covering the hinge. Mostly because it's easier to attach those small strips oversize, stretch them over the hinge and trim off when set.

Here the original skin is being persuaded to stay attached whilst the glue sets, I applied the skin damp so that it holds the curve as it dries out.

Righto, back to some more rot.

The front hatch. Now this was a major mess on close inspection. The front is riveted to the inner tray via a beefy brass hinge. The front suffers all the aluminum rot issues as the other parts, only more so. There are several differing metals with wide mating faces, rivets passing through and tray like construction designed to collect any moisture in the air. This is the result after 113 years. When de riveting, I usually drive them out as gently as I can intending to put the same rivet back later and peening it back over. This usually works just fine. The hatch was separated from the inner tray leaving the hinge attached to the front. The leather outer cover was removed, putting up a surprising fight given the amount of corrosion that had spread beneath it. It came off in the end in one piece, stiff as a board having been drained of all its natural oil by the aluminium oxide.

Eurgh factor nine. There are several wood screws passing through this assembly into the decorative mahogany inserts on the other side. They have to come out. Kodak helpfully buries them beneath plaster of Paris filler. it's there to keep the surface smooth so as to not spoil the look of the leather covering. Fortunately it also protected the screws from moisture, so once excavated they were clean and came out without a fuss.

Aluminium is one of those curious metals that forms a hard oxide layer on the fresh metal very rapidly. This grey layer then protects the underlying from further damage, which is why you can leave aluminium untreated. But, if it's in contact with something acidic, akali or has a different metal passing through it with a bit of damp thrown in for good measure it very happily turns to powder.

With the mahogany inserts removed, this is what we have. It's certainly not pretty. This part will serve as a guide as to where we go from here. I will attempt to clean it with everything left in place, otherwise there are a lot of rivets to remove. Mercifully the tell tale blistering of aluminium rot under the leather is conspicuous by its absence. This is a much tighter looking material, it may not be leather in fact but a man made linen backed material judging by the fraying along the edges. Either way it looks to be in reasonable shape, if a bit filthy and has done a fine job of protecting the aluminium beneath.

If the bright work cleans up tolerably well, this will set the tone of the remaining restoration...

After all the corrosion was removed from the outer side of the front hatch. It's pitted and discoloured but will be hidden beneath the original leather, so no matter. The pitting will actually give a good key for the adhesive anyway.

The leather gets treated in distilled water and the old glue scraped away carefully, this has the added benefit of stretching it slightly which compensates for the shrinkage from being sucked dry by the aluminium oxide spreading beneath it all these years. When putting it back it goes on damp as this keeps it soft, and generally I use PVA as it seals the aluminium against air very nicely, hopefully stopping this corrosion from returning.

Now to address the other assemblies associated with the lens bed or front hatch.

The lens standard struts are mounted to this nickel plated brass block, that runs along the track riveted to the lens bed. Seen as removed, it's tatty but judging from the way the lens bed cleaned up should clean up equally well. The rust on the steel arm has breached the obnoxious level ensuring it will be repainted. The camera nameplate is a bit too unsightly and given that it tends to be in close proximity to the repaired focus scale, will be refinished to an appropriate standard.

The spirit level is a sub assembly in itself. The sealed glass bubble guide is on the right, it will have the red backing renewed.

Most of these parts will just be cleaned and put back as they are. That lovely bit of bright felt must surely be as vibrant as the day it came out of Kodak's Rochester factory.

Are we there yet?

Not a chance, but the lens elements have been cleaned so far as possible, now it's time to look at that Koilos.

Kodak can't claim any credit for the Koilos shutter other then the wisdom of choosing it from a third party supplier. Made by Gauthier in Germany, this shutter really was rather special in the day. This one looks a bit forlorn though. That nasty corrosion on the setting lever means it's going to have to come off for polishing and re plating. Which inevitably means the entire thing has to come apart.

This innocuous looking spring shouldn't be taken lightly, that 10mm diameter packs a punch you don't want to be messing with. It's the mainspring responsible for opening the shutter leaves and overcoming the pneumatic governor whilst the air escapes, determining the exposure time. The setting lever locates in a slot and can be removed by backing it off, the lever itself then needs to align with an exit slot in the front before it can be withdrawn, the dust cover taken out and finally this mechanism can be removed. This whole strip down was undertaken just to get the lever off, well that and to satisfy my insatiable curiosity. The spring was blown through with solvent and re greased in situ. You'd really need a spring winder cylinder to take this out and put back in, identical to clock making practice.

The material is blued spring steel, but the anchor end is left mild steel and distorts easily, so a little caution is required.

The various plates and dial were cleaned, the shutter reassembled then reunited with the camera itself. Up close all the age, wear, pits and scrapes are still largely there, just much tidier now. It works and a quick if unimpressive test sheet shows it can take photographs. For this an undersize sheet of 9x12cm sheet film was placed in the back as the single glass plate would have been, so now I need to dream up a suitable subject for it.

This Folding Pocket Kodak came from the golden era for Kodak. The cameras were well made and well equipped in this instance. This was a hard but thoroughly rewarding journey and I hope it's given you some appreciation for these humble old Kodaks.

I am keeping the 360 view for this camera in it's unrestored state, so that is preserved too, you can see that via the button below.

Next restoration Project page.