As both research for The Future is Still Silver and Black and just general enthusiasm for the subject, I’ve become a collector of unique and interesting Museum of Science and Industry Chicago merchandise so I bought a trio of MSI View Master reels off eBay. Now I didn’t have a View Master to look at them with, but since eBay now thought I had a deep and enduring love of vintage View Master reels, their algorithm was kind enough to put one they thought I’d like in front of my eyes.
Well, they were right.
They got my fuckin’ number. I did end up getting a pretty good offer from the seller, but they were also clear that while the projector did turn on and light up, the lever was broken.
But perhaps not irreparably!
So a View Master, if you’ve never have one, is a stereoscope with a lever that you pull to cycle through each of the 7 photographs on a reel. If the lever is broken, you cannot change the photos. But I imagined it was a pretty simple mechanism so I took a chance on being able to fix it.
It was a little dicey getting it open because it was closed up with these little metal tab things but they were hardier than you’d think seventy(?)-year-old bits of bendy metal would be. They even snapped back into place when I was done.
And then once I’m in, there’s this paperboard cover protecting the mechanism secured with these little… brads? Like, they’re kinda like leatherworking notions.
Once I got that off – gently! – I’m in business. I can see the broken lever and how it should wrap around the flange on the mechanism.
Basically, the lever is a plastic loop shape that should fit snugly around that raised flange, but the top part has snapped off. Incredibly though, the missing bit was in the box! We have the entire assembly!
It’s simply a matter of putting it back together.
Reunited and it feels so good. Or it did, until I tried it out and it broke. I tried gluing it together again, this time giving it the full twenty-four hours of curing time Gorilla Glue recommends, but it broke when I tried it in the mechanism again. I started thinking then that I’d need to give it a little more support. It took me a while to figure out how. That I should probably give it some sort of metal backing came to me pretty quick, but the actual material was ??? Ideally, I would have used something like what they make Metal Earth kits out of. I even had a kit that I got out to see if there was any spare negative space on the cards. No dice though. The freight train kit is using every bit of every sheet included.
Eventually, I arrived at this:
Bein’ girly pays off again. The metal was a bit stiffer than I would have liked. It was difficult to cut with my wire cutters, which is not really the correct tool for this. Also, if you’re gonna do this or something like it, maybe wear protective gloves. I did cut myself up a bit. Not deeply or anything; I didn’t even notice until I washed my hands later. But I do have kevlar gloves I used for other more obviously dangerous crafts and I probably should have worn them here.
So I traced out the shape of the lever’s loop on to metal and started cutting it out with wire cutters. When I was done, it looked like this!
When I hammered it back into its actual shape, it looks more familiar:
I glued it on to the plastic and then when I thought it was sturdy enough, I started sanding with this improvised tool…
Before I realized that was dumb and used my Dremel tool instead. At which point the vibration dislodged the metal from the plastic and broke the loop again.
Yakety Sax-ass project.
So I glued it back together, again, with clamps and with twenty-four hours of cure time. And then I used the Dremel to refine the shape of the metal support to match the shape of the lever loop. And then I tried it out again. And it worked!
Here it is in action, displaying a tiny projection of “Soo Locks World’s Busiest” from the Upper Michigan USA reel. I also had to do some repairs on the lens, but that was less interesting then fabricating a lever support. Point is, it now works as it did the day it came out of its box. Maybe there’s a little friction on the lever, but most things get a little stiff after seventy years.
Included with my projector were its previous owner’s collection of reels and the official Sawyer’s View Master box they kept them all catalogued in. Some reels (particularly three-reel collections like my MSI ones) come in a graphic envelop, but many single reels just came in a small nondescript paper envelop. This previous owner had typed up all the titles on these reels and taped them to the back of these envelopes so you could see what you were in for.
The lens I had to fix also showed signs of an attempted repair and if that was any indication, they must have tried very hard to keep this thing in service, only to find the broken lever an insurmountable break. I think it is very likely that the previous owner of my projector is no longer with us, but I hope they would be pleased to know that it’s now in working order again and that their handiwork is being carefully preserved.
Unfortunately, though the projector works, the light bulb is also seventy years old and gets incredibly hot incredibly fast. I looked it up and apparently later models of this projector came with a base that would blow air on it to keep the temperature… probably not controlled. Managed. So, for this reason, I will not actually be using my projector to view my new collection of vintage reels.
Instead, I bought this View Master so I could look at my reels without setting them on fire or melting them. I really wish I could show you the photos in the MSI reels because they are amazingly crispy for their age and they’re also from a very specific and identifiable time period. And yeah, eBay got me good because I probably will buy more vintage reels now that I have the hardware to view them twice over.
So that link to the View Master is an affiliate link. If you also want a View Master and buy one through this page, I get a small commission and you get a shiny red toy that shows you five reels worth of rad wildlife photos. Everybody – including, yes, Amazon – wins!
Comment