Premier Pathescope Repairs (1).

I did some restoration/repair work on a Pathescope Premier for a friend, which arrived sans lamphouse. The projector as it stood was very odd - the pivoted leaf to which the lamphouse should have been attached was present, but in the shape of a Victor lamphouse, rather than the Premier type on my own machine. As usual, a major part of the challenge was to make and fit a lamphouse without doing any further violence to the machine. Here are some shots of the lamphouse I devised. It has a double skin, the outer held in place simply by the screws from inside the inner skin. A Pathé Baby provided a tube for the lamp, seen protruding on the left of the side view. Here is my report on the work I did.

Right. Here is a report to date. I stripped the projector down quite a lot, (see pix below) to help with cleaning and to get at one or two problem areas.

I mentioned to you the potential problem with the intermittent sprocket. It had somehow been squashed at one end, so it was no longer circular; I have managed to correct most of it, tho I have not yet run any tests to see if the very small pins on the squashed end do the job OK. The mechanism was stiff, and I traced this to the intermittent itself, which I therefore dismantled.

The intermittent sprocket is held onto its shaft by a taper pin. Presumably whatever damaged the sprocket itself also bent something, because the mech worked fine when the pin was out, but jammed up again when I put it back. I don't have the sort of drill for re-boring the hole - I've never come across them so I replaced it with a nut and bolt; not ideal, and you will have to keep an eye on it in case it comes loose, a sign of which will be the film going out of rack. The Maltese cross bit runs in a semi oil-bath and has a gasket between the cover and the machine to keep the oil in. The original (which I will give you) was pretty far gone; my first attempt at replacement leaked, and I am just hoping the second will be OK.

The motor's lead was broken off level with the casing, so I had to completely dismantle it. Fortunately, there was enough wire left for me to solder a new lead to, and the motor did work on test. One of the biggest problems has been matching some of the screw threads, which are old American Imperial and sometimes hard to find. I even made some, for holding the base cover on. The original cover (which I will give you) was beyond hope; I made a new one. I didnt try to re-use the remaining bits of the feet (ditto), and made new ones.

The lamphouse was a real marathon. For some reason, the hinged plate the lamphouse fixes to is of Victor pattern, suggesting a tall squared lamphouse with rounded bits where the lamp is. I started out down this route, but found it too difficult. I resorted to a simpler, circular job. The difficulty was fixing it to the machine I did consider just a friction fit around the condenser, but the condenser was already cracked (no doubt the result of far too powerful a lamp in the pre-focus holder it arrived with). I succeeded in the end, but I did have to actually do something to the machine, which I normally avoid. It was only countersinking the screws that secure the condenser, tho, and not visible. I have fitted a 12v 50w lamp; you could try a 100w one if it doesnt get too hot. The paint is heat-resistant, tho.

The lamphouse is a two-skin affair, to give some ventilation without too much light spill. I can't hope to match the sort of thing found on an original lamphouse. Lucky the condenser was there; a new one would have been very hard to find. The lampholder I basically made, apart from the tube that mounts thru the hole into the lamphouse, which I stole from a Pathé Baby. I copied the connectors from the Baby, too. The mirror is from a 200B. I haven't tested yet and I dont know how well this will all work. A friend has found some braided wire that looks very like the original, so I have fitted some of this for the lamp connections.

I told you the front spool arm and back cover looked quite different from the rest all glossy and undamaged. The back cover is in fact a bit of a force fit, so I suspect both parts came from a different machine.

The way the rear spool arm fits is odd. There is a square hole in the arm, and the large retaining screw had a square section at the top to match. Unfortunately, this was irrelevant as the arm fits on the opposite side of the mounting lug, which has a round hole. The screw ended up standing proud with its square peg refusing to go into the round hole. So the only other change I have made is to machine off the square bit on the screw.

As agreed, I have made no attempt to paint any of the original parts; all I have done is to clean and polish. It looks a bit piebald, with the back cover, front arm, lamphouse and shutter all looking new and the rest well battered.

One of the problems with everything I do is that its basically a series of one-offs. I have to design a solution to the problem, then make it work, so inevitably there are errors and false starts. Even with the shutter, which I have done before, I made several mistakes and had to re-do stuff.

What remains to be done now is:-

Finish the wiring. I plan to have a trailing connector coming out of the base thru an existing hole, a 5-way one for motor, lamp and earth.

Sort out a power supply. If I can find an old Eumig P8 I might do what I did with K's KOK, and just re-wire the projector so it acts as the power supply, otherwise I have to build a box for the power supply.

Find a suitable lens.

Cross fingers and test.