One final check in before we take a few days off for the holidays. The Fox Freehead is now about 90% repaired. I have been working on the frozen tilt axis for the last week; it is another remarkable piece of engineering. The tilt axis is made up of a two-part casting that houses the […]
A Final 2021 Update on the Fox Freehead Read More »
Success! Thanks to the folks at Jim’s Tap Extraction Service in Torrance, CA, the broken hardened screws were EDMed out of the casting of the Fox Freehead! Also, at the 11th hour yesterday, the grease I was recommended finally arrived. In the meantime, I went on a search to see if the original ¼-20 fillister
Another Step Forward for the Fox Freehead Read More »
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
Good Grease Hunting Read More »
Just a quick update on the progress on the Fox Freehead before we break for Thanksgiving. I have spent most of the week up to my elbows in various types of grease, trying to clean all of the orifices and metering valves that control the drag on the pan axis. This is proving to be
A Quick Update on the Fox Freehead Before Thanksgiving Read More »
The Fox Freehead has now finally been broken down to its basic parts. The 82 year old grease, rust, aluminum chips, and most of the broken screws have been removed and cleaned. Simple degreaser was not adequate for this project. It took hours with dental picks, wire brushes, acetone, and degreaser to get all of
Disassembly of the Fox Freehead is Nearly Complete Read More »
I finally made some progress on disassembling the Fox Freehead! Many thanks to everyone who made helpful suggestions. Seven days of soaking the screws that hold the top plate to the Freehead, and many hours of tapping, pounding, and twisting later, I was finally able to get the screws out of the top plate. Thinking
Progress and Delays on Freehead Repair Read More »
Still not having much success getting the 80-year-old screws out of the Fox Freehead, and to avoid that frustrating task, I turned instead to replacing the missing telescoping pan tilt handle. I spent a long time studying the bad black and white photographs in the Fox Camera manual, and they showed two possibilities for the
Machining a new handle for the Fox Freehead Camera Mount Read More »
As I am feverishly trying to bring the Fox camera back to shooting condition, a few items remain unfinished. The pan tilt head is stalled while I try to remove the rest of the stubborn screws, wait for rubber hand grips to arrive, and as I machine the pan handle extension locking lever. I have
Powering the Fox Cine Simplex Camera Read More »
As I work toward a demonstration of the total Fox Cine Simplex system, I decided to work on the pan tilt head, which the Fox engineers call the “Freehead Camera Mount”. Most of us take the pan tilt devices we use for granted, as they are just always there and we depend on them to
Fox Cine Simplex Freehead Camera Mount Read More »
As I bring the Fox camera closer to running film for the first time in many years, I thought it was very interesting to show how much thought went into the simple magazine. Anyone who has loaded a film magazine knows the frustrations associated with that process, especially those in the visual effects end of
Ingenious Features of the Fox Camera Magazine Read More »
