"This item appears brand new or factory sealed and we believe it to be in complete and perfect functioning condition."
So said the description at eBay, for the Olympus bellows that I thought would make a nice spare.
The ad continued, of course. "As with all liquidation products this is sold 'as is' and what you see in the photo is what you are bidding on."
Well, that didn't seem to be any great problem, 'cuz what the photo showed was indeed an Olympus bellows in fine condition.
The operative word, alas, was "was".
By the time the cretins in the shipping chain were done crushing and twisting the box, what eventually arrived was unfortunately a collection of unconnected parts -- a front mounting here, a back mounting there, a tripod mount to the side, a very pretty rack in the middle, and a dozen fragments of what used to be nylon dovetails that held everything together. Everything else appeared to be in good shape, but without those dovetails, everything else was pretty useless, too.
On the bright side, I had at my disposal two key resources: 1) a working bellows of the same design, and 2) a father who delights in precision woodworking.
What you see above is part of the results -- a manufactured nylon dovetail on the top, and a replacement wooden dovetail on the bottom.
The replacements work at least as well as the originals, and they're much prettier. They'll probably hold up longer, too. The nylon ones are famous for cracking across that thin part of the dovetail -- and you can see why, looking at how this one deforms when clamped.
My father and I really don't know what the species of wood is. It was labeled only "Gumbera" by the distributor, and none of my Internet searches found that as a type of wood. All we know is that it's very heavy, extremely hard, and just a bit oily. It has prominent but very finely spaced rings and rays, obvious in both pictures.
The repaired bellows now works great, and in fact these pictures were taken using the other repaired parts.[*]
Hope you enjoy the pictures -- the repaired bellows is a treat!
--Rik
Technical: Canon 300D, Olympus 80mm f/4 bellows lens at f/5.6, single frame (no stack). Upper picture is almost full frame; lower picture is actual-pixels.
[*] The pictured parts are tripod mounts. I can almost, but not quite, resist saying that what we have here is a repaired bellows "shooting itself in the foot".
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