While I don’t usually work on outside projects or projectors, I met a very charming man named Harvey Dunn who brought me a Pathe 28mm hand-cranked projector that he wanted restored. This projector is a part of Harvey’s wonderful collection of hand-cranked cameras and projectors. When he brought it to me, the projector was missing the crank, the aperture/pressure plate, the top film guide rollers, the mounting for the lamp house, and the top feed roller casting was broken and the roller crushed. The original wooden base was in rough shape and missing large sections of wood. The goal was to make the projector suitable for display, but on a very limited budget. After some research, I thought it would be best to work mostly on the mechanical parts. I machined a new aperture/pressure plate, as well as the upper guide roller assembly, the lamp house support, made a new hand-crank, and solvent welded the feed roller assembly casting back together. There wasn’t enough money to do serious restoration on the original wooden base, so I had a new presentation sub-base made that the whole unit could be mounted to. Everything was lubricated, a new spring belt was installed to run the generator, and the projector was cranked and tested. I didn’t have any 28mm film, but everything seemed to work.
