Building my Bulldog

I've just finished building my 4x5 version. I thought the book was very clear to follow. Before I started I bought a number of small clamps to hold pieces in place while glueing them.

I made two mistakes, I split the MDF bar across the end of the focussing screen by carelessness but was able to fix it easily by glueing and inserting some small dowels (bamboo meeat skewer). Despite the warning about care drilling out the hole for the rack spindle I managed to drill off line. I don't have a drill stand so have to hand hold. My solution was to make drilling guide out of a thick wooden block, clamp it to the camera in the right place, drill the hole out larger on the right alignment and insert a small metal bush set in araldite. This worked fine. I wish I had thought of making the drilling guide first!

I've just been to 'Mr Cad' and bought a second hand 135mm lens with shutter and lensboard, also some darkslides, so hope to get out and use the camera soon.

I've been looking at the 8x10 version but when I looked up the price of darkslides for that size I quickly lost interest! But would a kit for self assembled dark-slides of that size be feasible?

Henry