The leatherette covering on my Rollei SL66 was in a pretty bad way. It was shrunken, lifting off most surfaces and the glue was seeping out of the edges. Curiously it was only the camera body and film back that had the problem, the covering on the lenses and finder is still in great condition.
I've finally gave up trying to re-glue the existing coverings and have replaced the leatherette. First I looked in some op shops at old leather handbags to cut up for leather coverings, but thin leather in non garish colouring was in short supply, then I found cameraleather.com. This company has an extensive range of leather and leatherette coverings, including pre-cut kits for many cameras. Unfortunately no kits for an SL66, so a sheet of Seal Grain Black Leatherette will have to do.
The difficult bit of this project was making up some paper templates for the missing and severely distorted original pieces. (I've created a PDF template as a starting point)
The new self adhesive leatherette is quite thin and easy to work with. It easily molds around those tricky 3D curves.
The result is a Rollei that looks presentable, and is once again usable. Seal Grain Black (coarse) is probably a better match for the original covering.
2 comments:
you still have that camera PB in SF USA
Sure do Pete. It is rusted on!
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