I've got a couple of Series D's that need their shutters replaced. I tried ordering some fabric from Micro Tools but Curt replied that he no longer carried big pieces of fabric. Can anybody direct me to another source? The fabric is .028 mm and needs to be six feet long. Thanks for the help. Mike

http://aki-asahi.com/store/html/curtains/shutter-curtain.php can sell up to 3000mm length on request, and have silk-rubber-silk curtains, too.

HTH Sevo

Thanks. I e-mailed them but, as of yet, have not gotten a reply. BTW, which of their two types of fabric do you recommend?

Double silk sided is generally best, whereever you can use it - exposed rubber wears down faster and is more vulnerable to burn holes.

I am mostly into European LF reflexes (Mentors, Thornton Pickards etc.) which usually have two short curtains, and have not yet had the need to rebuild the curtain on my Graflexes. Given their much longer curtain, the strength of the curtain material might be more critical on Graflex shutters - it would be advisable to request numbers and calculate the resulting size of the curtain spool.

Sevo

Hi there - Are you sure about that .028 mm dimension? I believe that only comes out to around 1/1000th of an inch. In my experience, Graflex curtains are almost 10 times that thick.

I can definitely vouch for the aki-asahi material. When I rebuilt my 4x5 Graflex shutter, I took a good look at both the Fargo/Micro-Tools material (FMT) and the aki-asahi (AA). While the FMT seemed adequate, the AA simply oozed quality. The non-rubberized side of the FMT had the appearance and feel of a light cotton weave. The AA had a more robust, hard and glossy nylon-like character. As far as the rubberized side, I found that the FMT, if folded so that the rubber faces made contact, would would stick to itself. The AA had no such tendency. Holding the FMT up to a halogen desk lamp showed myriad tiny pinholes. The AA remained utterly opaque. (By the way, I do not claim that the halogen test has any relation to real world performance. It is just a test.) Plus, the AA just had a better "hand" in the most subjective terms. On the possible downside, the AA is about 1.5 times heavier than the FMT per unit area. I do not mean to say it is thicker; rather it actually weighs 1.5 times more for any given area. I do not recall the relative thickness of the two, but I do not recall them being radically different.

Now, bear in mind that one of the members here has made many curtains from the FMT, so there is ample evidence that it works just fine for large shutters. The above observations are just a record of what I found when I compared the two materials. Speaking from personal experience, the AA also makes an excellent choice for a curtain material.

So far, when I spoke about the AA material, I was speaking only of the silk-rubber type. I chose that type because that is what I found in my dried out 4x5. However, I have made an interesting finding during my current rebuild of a monster 5x7 Press Graflex. The AA material does not build thickness on the 5x7 spool as fast as one would hope, which caused some spacing headaches. This is pure conjecture here, but I can't help but wonder if the original 5x7 curtains were just a bit thicker than their 4x5 siblings. If so, then the silk-rubber-silk might be a better choice for a 5x7. I will get a chance to try this theory on my next 5x7!

Good luck with your projects. There is no substitute for the slick action of a newly rebuilt Graflex shutter!

Semi