Another Dag box ques. from Ty

[TyG]

Hello guys, it’s been a little while since I dropped by. I have stopped making cameras for the time being; and have done a couple sets of dag boxes since then. I have had a steady stream of inquiries about dag boxes over the last year. Actually three in just the last two weeks. I have been gracefully declining the orders. Mainly because I CANNOT STAND to grind the dishes and mess with plexiglass.

Over the last few years, I’ve had so many guys give me the “rules & regs” of fume box designs. I would still like to be able to provide some of these on a small scale. I was checking out a guy in the UK and noticed he has no dish.

Let me just ask: would a box made of hardwood and only a plexi or garolite(bakelite) slide work? The bromine or iodides could put in just a shallow dish at the bottom. But, the slide would seal against the wood and not the dish as all my previous boxes.

I realize this may not be the most optimum seal as glass on glass and of course the fumes may eat the wood in 50 years or so, but would this be a viable, economic compromise for me to offer some of the guys here in the states?

I reckon to not be miss-leading in any way, I was looking at this design with possibly some changes.

[CasedImage]

Hi Ty

Good to hear of the interest in your work and the genre as a whole. Iodine eats fairly rapidly through wood so unless there is a glass on glass seal the boxes and their metal hinges are going to not last long. Also if the wood gets laden with iodine then controlling the amount of exposure to the fumes gets even less precise. Mike Robinson did a nice set of boxes in the 19th century french style – http://www.cdags.org/2011/07/20/french-revival/ – which used a square glass dish made of glass sheets glued together, which makes finding the right size dish not a problem.

Thanks for bearing with us

-Alan.

www.CasedImage.com

[jgmotamedi]

Ty,

If you want to make high-quality boxes, I honestly don’t think you have much choice but use glass, especially if you are selling to people who are also using bromine. The problem with using wood isn’t only that the chemicals will eventually destroy it, but that hard wood simply doesn’t have a tight enough grain structure to prevent the fumes from escaping.

One option for you would be to ask the customer to do their own grinding. It takes a while, but anyone can do it.

jason

[TyG]

Thank you for your answers.

[Author]

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