Carved Wooden Camera
This post will chart the progress of my attempt to carve a wooden camera, but before all the details, firstly I would like to apologise for neglecting the blog a little lately. I have been very busy since Christmas with both portrait photography and some interior remodelling of our house.
The Carved Wooden Camera Body
I was recently asked if I thought it was possible to make a carved wooden camera, this was after they had seen the welsh love spoon i had carved my wife for Valentine’s Day. Not one to refuse a challenge, I must be mad. Whilst renovating our boys’ bedroom I had to remove some large pieces of 2″ X 4″ wood from a partition wall that was being taken out. So I have the wood I need for the project, what next.
The wood was cut into lengths slightly larger than the final size, this was done to help me get the final size of the wooden camera to match the size of my real camera.
I started with the rear of the camera and after a while I had the basic shape, because the wood I was using was not large enough to span the entire height, I had to cut another piece which was glued to the bottom section. This piece would eventually become the wooden camera’ top plate, viewfinder, dials and prism box. Roughly shaped version shown below:
The Battery Grip
The Battery grip was next, I thought I would get away with just one piece of wood for this, I was mistaken. I had to add a small piece of wood to one side of the wooden cameras battery grip. This was, because the width of the wood was not quite wide enough to be bake to incorporate the secondary shutter button. Whilst a relatively simple looking piece it took quite a while to get it to the right shape and involved the removal of a fair bit of wood.
The Lens
The lens, and lens hood is made up of three square pieces of wood glued together then shaped to look like a lens barrel and hood. I think this was the hardest part and am not entirely happy with the result, maybe use a lathe if I ever attempt another one. Once the glue had dried, I used a saw to get a roughly circular shape, which was then refined with my most used tool on this project a Dremel and multiple accessories.
The most time consuming part of this stage of the construction was shaping and hollowing out the part which eventually became the lens hood. Which I think is the bit which turned out the best from the whole project, in stark contrast to the lens barrel.
The finished Wooden Camera
And the final result from all my hard work, after staining and varnishing can be seen below. All in all using the tools I did this project took me just over two weeks. The tools where a penknife, a saw, a fret saw, a Dremel (the only electric tool used) and sandpaper. Apologies for the quality these were taken on my iPhone 3g.
Gareth Williams LSWPP – Portrit Photography Dundee
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