RESTORATION (DATE April 23rd, 2011)

It is finally here. It took almost 2 months to fly from NZ to Argie, but it was worth the wait.

The FPS gauge



Its new home




Together at last

N.Z. TO THE RESCUE

Disclaimer: This is not an earthquake related post.

Time-wise, it doesn´t get any further away than this. Buenos Aires being GMT -3:00 and Auckland being GMT +12:00, nobody can say that I haven´t searched the earth for those elusive parts I am missing. Straight from New Zeland and from a person I consider a friend (even though I have no idea what he looks like), comes one of the most meaningful parts missing: the film speed dial that is (was) missing from my Ernemann (see picture below).

Thanks, Dave!

RESTORATION (DATE March 27th, 2011)

What´s new? Trap/Gate assembly are finished and in place. So are top and bottom pad rollers. The José Reyes Soundhead is coming along nicely too. As you can see it is completely bare of paint. The idea is to get it finished and working, then I´ll dissasemble it again and send it to be painted in the same shop that did the projector. Oh, and, just for fun, I slapped a DTS timecode reader on top of it.

 

ERNEMANN II

A working Ernemann II in someone´s house. How cool is that?!

RESTORATION (DATE MAR 8th, 2011)

Almost all of the time that I have spent in my "workshop" this past weeks has been devoted to organizing it to make the most of the space. I did find time here and there to work on the E-III restoration. Progress has not been note worthy.

I have assembled, though, the trap/gate assembly (as you can see in the picture). It´s been 3 years since I had taken it apart. So, pictures of it in its original state were mandatory to make sense of all the bits and pieces. :(



Pic taken on January 2008



Cinema "Polonia" at Sopot, Poland

RESTORATION (DATE 11-NOV-2010)

890 days have elapsed since my last post here. This labours of love are usually like this. That is the reason why they usually take 10 years to complete. My passions have taken me back to work on this restoration and here I deliver some pictures of my recent progress.

RESTORATION (Date 4-JUN-08)

I´ve been trying to devote every spare second to this restoration, because next Monday, June 16th, I´m leaving town again to go on another instalation. This time an 8plex.

Here are some pictures of the progress I have been making with the Reyes Soundhead.

RESTORATION (31-MAY-08)

Last Saturday (after spending 3 weeks on an install of a new 5-plex) I returned to my dealer (the same guy whole sold me the Cinemeccanica lamphouse and the Reyes Soundhead). I was to pickup the lensholder for my E-III.

This used lens holder was attached to an old E-II that has been out of work for a number of years. Removing the lensholder from the E-II was, apparently, too much of a struggle for my dealer, so, for a few peanuts more, I took home the entire thing.

I intend to use this E-II for spares for my E-III, since they are virtually the same.

As some of you know, the E-II came from the factory with an external shutter blade, that spinned in front of the lens mount. This particular one had been modified to take a barrel shutter behind the gate.

(This is what they used to look like)

RESTORATION (18-MAY-08)

This past month has not been very active on this restoration, unfortunately. I was busy working on another area of my life. Finally, my E-III and me have a new home.

RESTORATION (7-APR-08)

"The most important thing is not to know everything, but rather to have the phone number of that person who does know everything."
Anonymous

I was out of my league, and I knew it. Rebuilding an intermittent that is 80 years old is more than I have patience for. This is why I took it to a dear friend of mine who has greater amounts of knowledge, patience and know-how at hand.

He chose to remain nameless.
But he did an excellent job on the intermittent. So much so, that I felt compelled to thank him through this.

RESTORATION (Date 22-Mar-08)

This past Saturday was a very exciting day for this restoration effort. In between Easter Eggs, I went to downtown Buenos Aires to pick up a Lamphouse and a Pedestal. Another benefactor of this process, LFC, located this two machines for me and negotiated a decent price.

We got together in what was once the heart of the entertainment district, where we met a local tech, who is sitting on a gold mine in the shape of obsolete film exhibition equipment. Totally neglected, but with the power to shine again.

The pedestal ended up being a heavy and obtuse chunk of metal that didn´t appeal to me. Instead, I ended up exchanging it for a soundhead, which appeared to be an RCA, but ended up being a autoctonous José Reyes Soundhead.

The soudhead came together with a Westinghouse syncronous motor together with a drive train to transmit motion to the soundhead sprocket, to the projector and to the lower reel.




The Lamphouse I ended up buying is a Cinemeccanica Zenith 420. It was manufactured for carbon arc, was later adapted for a Xenon bulb and, after years of neglect, was ravaged for spares and any copper that could be sold off for a quick buck.

RESTORATION (Date 11-Mar-08)

One of the things that made this awesome paint job look cheap, was how the letters and the serial # were covered in paint.


Step 1 was, of course, to remove the paint.


Step 2 is to figure out if to leave them bare metal or go with some color. Maybe devil red...?

RESTORATION (Date 6-MAR-08)

The other big benefactor of this restoration, Dave Ritchie, went into great pains to get the chrome parts of his Ernemann Imperator to shine. (You can read about Dave´s efforts, here.)

I don´t mind admitting that I am way too lazy to go to such extremes, so I just gave my parts a good scrapeing and sent them to be nickel-plated.

Today I got those parts back.








"Not all that shines, is gold"

RESTORATION (DATE 4-MAR-08)

As it turned out, I already had the oil pump of the projector, I just did not know it. After a lot of legwork, and thanks to one of the two major benefactors of this restoration effort: Warren Smyth of New Zealand, I realised that that strange gear, inside of the lower sprocket casing, was in fact the oil pump! Go figure!

That little piece of pipe that´s sticking out beneath it is what connects the pump to the bat where the oil is collected.

As you can see, it is quasi-hard to suspect that the pump is hiding inside that casing once the cover is on!

RESTORATION (DATE 16-FEB-08)

If you look for the definition of Eco-Projector in the Websters Dictionary, alongside the explanation, you´ll find this picture:



Eco-Projector: Environmentally friendly projector.

Note the tiny Caterpillar dancing through the base of the projector. The downside of working in the garden.

All jokes aside, these are the latest pictures of the putting-back-together process.