New Elstree Studio documentary with discarded Graflex.

Superglue was new in the 70's (I also remember the Krazy Glue commercials cementing the guy's hard hat to an I beam then letting him hang from the beam). There's an interview with, IIRC, Lorne Peterson where he describes introducing the crew at ILM to superglue as he was familiar with it from industrial use and it was just becoming available to the consumer market.

That said, of the Graflexes I own some ears are tighter than others and I find gently compressing the flanges where the pin runs through can do the trick as well.
 
Received my D-ring and installed it (no issues with the rivets this time, thankfully). Chuffed to see that the holes I eyeballed for my home made d-ring clip lined up perfectly!

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That looks great! Your homemade version looks really nice, too, you almost didn't even need to get Roy's!
 
Received and installed Roy’s new d-ring. It’s a great product, and the final result matches the toe pic quite nicely, even If we can’t quite confirm whether the original prop had two rivets or not.
 
Just for funzies, I rotated the upper half on my TGS for some photos. I should again point out that removing the clamp lever washer and giving the lever that extra turn produces an exact match with the toe pic. That little nub of the lever screw sticks out of the upper sidebar, and the lever closes most “comfortably” in the semi-open position we’ve become used to seeing in the ANH prop. You can still force the lever all the way closed, but it’s tough.

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Gotta say that I’m getting used to the two-rivet clip, too. Interesting that the earliest replicas and whatnot indicated two rivets, since people had scant ANH reference back in the day, and so were retroactively applying the ESB prop’s use of two rivets on the Kobold clip. Then, someone came up with the notion of a single rivet (presumably because two would seem a bit crowded on the smaller ANH clip), and pretty much every licensed and fan replica over the past decade-plus has stuck with that.

And now we’ve come full circle!
 
Also, because of my discovery regarding the clamp washer and the lever, I’m now convinced that the bubbles were indeed beveled and slid into the clamp, rather than being pinched between the clamp teeth (and the lever being unable to fully close because of it).
 
Also, because of my discovery regarding the clamp washer and the lever, I’m now convinced that the bubbles were indeed beveled and slid into the clamp, rather than being pinched between the clamp teeth (and the lever being unable to fully close because of it).

I'm doing my new build this way (tore apart the old one). I've been experimenting with the bevel on the eBay bubble piece that broke.
 
Like a lot of things Star Wars it's a bit of futz around with it until it fits. I'm making a belt hanger with a TGS 2 and the fit is a lot looser than it is with my authentic Folmer. Here it is in the TGS. I had to center the strip so it would close evenly. I shaved off a bit of the top edge with a Dremel and a teardrop bit.

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Vintage Folmer and Exactra:

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Did a bit more messing around as I was jonesing to finish my ANH belt hanger. I've used my Rebelscum bubble strip to finish this off. I just took a file and knocked off the edge of the strip and was able to get a tight fit. I can still close the clamp lever all the way but it's a fight to do so. This is the test run for an all-vintage Folmer build. TGS2 tarted up with vintage Graflex guts, ears, tab and button.

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It makes sense to me because I have always seen bubble strip material poking out from underneath the clamp edges, as if it were skinny enough to slide in. It ALSO seemed like the bubble strip sat flush with the clamp's surface.

Beveled edges would do just that.
 
Makes sense. I see no logic in literally clamping the strip between the teeth when they could have just shaved the strip down to get it to slide into the clamp. And, as noted, the washer-less clamp already accounts for the lever sticking out the way it does in the reference.
 
My immediate thought when this was found was that this is the bubble strip from the original hero (s) and it ended up in this prototype. Hard to verify, just a gut feeling since we don't see many duplicates of real prop parts floating around and we know props were disassembled and cannabalized for future needed props
 
Hi all,

I finally had some time to do my perspective matching and reverse engineering tricks with the Elstree saber information.

First, I checked my current ANH D-ring and clip on the old promo pictures. They still seem to be matching nicely!

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Then I created the Elstree saber D-ring in CAD. I found out that it's the EXACT SAME SIZE RING as on the hero prop.
So my current D-ring matches perfectly (I mean the ring itself).
The rivet heads are 6.0mm diameter (the same as my 3mm rivets).

View attachment 1002034
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Then I tried to match this Elstree D-ring and bracket combo on the promo pics. As predicted: no match.

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Then I tried a mix between the two brackets: a longer bracket with two 3mm pop-rivets.

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So, my conclusions are:
  • the hero belt-hanger had a longer bracket than the Elstree saber (we knew that already!)
  • my D-ring size is spot on!
  • my current bracket (or clip) is very close, but could be little shorter (the ring is inside the Graflex diameter)
  • a double rivet assembly is very probable. The toe-pic MIGHT show the gloss of two rivet heads. With the Elstree as a reference I think it's VERY likely.
I am now thinking of changing my ANH clips to a double rivet version. And in aluminium.
What do you guys think?

Cheers,
Roy



...okay, some time has passed, and those mystery rivets in-between the grips continue to nag at me. I don’t suppose Roy could do his magic to determine their size and placement, could he?
 

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