Soo... i made the trip, just came home a few hours ago. It was tricky, from all points of view.
Didn't wanted to use my car because if the guy at customs decided i was breaking the law he would confiscate my car, no way. Yes, customs here are based on day humor, person, climate, planets alignment, etc etc.
That left me with ferry+car rental and disassembling the monster and packing in bags, yes, its doable, its a pain though (weight)
When arrived at Buenos Aires, no gps from the car rental company, I reserved one though. My GF was my gps then, thank god she went with me. Best woman ever!
The place was not in Bs. As but in its province: Moron. Its far away from downtown.
After 1:30 hs driving through crazy traffic (saturday madness?) came to the place of transaction
Well, it was not that pristine as the seller described it, as I see it, 2 major flaws.
BTW I hate when this stuff happens, the thing was used, I expected some paint fading but what I found later...
That left me with little time to think about what to do. I decided to take it, hoping that I could source spare parts (shipping a counter weight spring is not shipping the column!!!) or fabricate them and the fact im thousands miles away from second hand -going out of business darkroom laborators
1- Counter balance spring has a missing part/piece/chip on one side (needs soon replacement im afraid) and seems to have made a bent in the cover housing (ouch!! how do you do that? this last thing is "makeup-able" ).
When locking the head, if you apply "some" force, the head moves... bad sign of defective locking mechanism?
2- Seller decided the internal blower could not manage long exposure times for giants enlargements and made a ''DIY'' horrendous adaptation for a tube and external blower. Im planning on fixing that too and installing an internal blower...
ohh boy, really, how could you do that? come on!!! it was not a clean work, will need to do some metal sheet work here.
3- Bright side: I have it, a 1st class enlarger that needs some care though (maybe it was not worth the $ 600 if I was in the US, but this is South America)
Can someone take a pic from its CLS 450 internal blower? maybe a brand/model plate?
Does anybody sourced a custom built flat spring for its laborator, Im thinking its doable, really, think about the counter balance for drills
thanks in advance
rodrigo
You don't need to keep reading from here 🙂
Before traveling back home I ended with 3 main packages if you were wondering how I did it:
1- travel bag with TRA 450, CLS 450, mixing boxes, neg carriers (have 2), neg masks and Rodenstocks in 50, 80, 105 and 150.
2- column (didn't dare to disassemble it more than what durst shipped when new)
3- base (this was expendable, i mean it was not mandatory to bring it, but after looking it, its so stiff and heavy I decided I could not get a decent replacement here)
Checked in the bag and base. That left me with the column inside a tripod bag with the big head support coming out in bubble wrap. Immediatly an argentinean customs asked, whats that? You cant carry that
First explanation, this is an enlarger, its stripped in 3 packages... blah blah
showed the "receipt" seller provided, a very old yellowish paper, from the times he had his darkroom. Ok you can go (first victory)
Came to security checkpoint (Argentinean navy guys with x rays machines)
Whats that? same explanation, added: i have a "go" from the customs guy... ok you can go on (second victory)
At this point everybody was looking strange at me, what's that? this man is crazy...
After arriving to Montevideo, long wait for passenger queue at customs. X-rays...same question, what the hell is that? Same explanation. wait wait wait, boss gave the ok, free to go.
In the end, it could have been a bigger headache (navy, customs, more customs, crashing the rented car) all I need now is to give the L1200 some care and use
It was quite an adventure,
