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Babies 2
Here are some pix of a strange baby. Someone seems to have made a very pro job of fitting a giant lamphouse, with a chrome back that seems to have been specially made, as it has a rim. But it's very shallow, the socket on the back points outward and the whole thing seems to have failed actually to achieve anything. Memo to self; consider fitting vertical Xenon lamp. Last pic is unconnected - a plug-in voltmeter labelled Pathé-Baby, courtesy Colin Loffler.
There were more conventional ways of getting more light. Lodex seemed to specialise in add-on bits; their Baby lamphouse used a 10v 5 amp lamp (I have seen exciter lamps of this description). A small mechanical fan was driven by a belt from a doubled-up pulley on the main drive shaft. I passed one on to Willem Hackman, who has built an impressive collection of Baby variants.
Yet another of Willem's Baby variants.
I have a number of decrepit Babies and add-ons. Here are the results of a re-spray of the worst bits. The lamphouse is sprayed with heat-resisting paint - the reason these are nearly always rusty is heat damage to the original paint. The other parts are sprayed with smooth Hammerite, covering parts as necessary with masking tape.
David Richardson has sent some splendid new pix of Babies with unusual attachments, for which many thanks - these are superb.
Reading from left to right, we have the Enlarger attachment for making frame blow-ups, a continuous projection attachment, a French patent lamphouse of unknown manufacture and a French-style machine with Souplex super attachments and motor.
Here we have the not-wholly-unknown rear-mounted dynamo, and one I've never heard of, a side-mounted dynamo with its own special mat. Next is a close-up of the Souplex motor and its friction brake and last, a front-mounted "R" motor, fitted with the optional flywheel for smoother running and its own special resistor, which I'd also never heard of. David promises more pix, too.
Another odd variant on the Baby theme. Ignore the Meccano (TM) pulley, tho' as it was fitted by grinding down the diameter of the shaft it means I shall have to strip the entire thing to replace. It looks to have too much engineering to be just an amateur lash-up - look at that guide pulley for the lower arm - but I have not seen its like before. There seems to be no provision for a brake of any kind, which I would have thought meant the take-up chewed up the film. The motor, incidentally, is 240v, so I don't know how the electrics would have worked either.
Now find out where you've been going wrong all these years.
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There's more Baby-related stuff under Gear.