I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday, ours was nice and restful. Now that we’re back, I have spent the week hunting everywhere for a suitable replacement grease to finish my work on the Freehead. According to the camera manual, the original grease used in the hydraulic damper for the Freehead was water pump grease manufactured by the Kendall Oil Company for 1940s cars. This grease of course is no longer manufactured. After much searching, I contacted a sales engineer from Phillips 66 (who also make Kendall products apparently), and they recommended Kendall SHP #2 (Calcium Sulfonate grease) as a replacement. The problem then was, most suppliers only provide this in 160 gallon drums! After much searching, I found a marine restoration company that could sell me the same product in 14 oz tubes. Just waiting on that to arrive now. In the meantime, I turned my attention to putting together a DC power supply to test run the camera when the time comes. I had an old 0-120V AC variac that was part of an animation stand from way back when, so I decided to add a bridge rectifier and connector to upcycle this vintage controller. I’ll add a DC voltage meter as well once it arrives. It now has a new life providing variable AC voltage as well as variable DC voltage.
