M2 beater repaint/recover

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picker77

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Here's the result of my first attempt at a Leica M makeover. Looks pretty good so far, it remains to be seen how it holds up getting thrown around inside my truck. Paint is airbrushed two-part catalyzed polymer over brass in "CavArms Foliage Green" color. It's a medium olive-gray in real life, don't know how it will look on your monitor. It has a nice quasi-military look that I like. Recover material is of course one of the excellent kits from CameraLeather in Charcoal Griptac.
Jerry
 

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That was the easy part, it was getting it back together that took a while. 🙂 I also have a VC-II meter I use on it which is silver in color with some scratches on it. I'm now casting my evil eye on that, considering making up a matching meter.
Jerry
 
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looks very cool, Not sure if I like the chrome dial and hotshoe on it but wouldnt be ideal to paint them to match. I really want an m2 to supliment my m4-p.
 
Yes, I had a local silverplating shop strip it to bare brass. I'll do the next one myself to save money. Wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the dials and shoe, but didn't want them the same color--so I just left them stock. Might strip them and do them in matte black one of these days. The paint is relatively expensive but their 4 oz minimum would do a boatload of cameras (or a couple of rifles!). I used one tablespoon to do this M2, and still poured some of that out when I was done. I'd like to find this stuff in 2 oz bottles but no luck on that yet. I have about 5 colors available at the moment, and you can easily mix your own color if you want. They claim an 18 month shelf life for an unopened bottle.
Jerry
 
Very cool, I'm tempted to do something like that to my M2...but it isn't beat up enough yet for me to be able to justify doing that. Maybe in 10 years, if we can still buy film then.
 
 
The metal parts are fine, but I don't much like the look of the back door. A skin of lighter colour would have been a good deal better, I suspect -- but I understand that Griptac comes only in black.
 
payasam said:
The metal parts are fine, but I don't much like the look of the back door. A skin of lighter colour would have been a good deal better, I suspect -- but I understand that Griptac comes only in black.
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Au contraire, it comes in several colors! The light gray is very attractive.

Here's akiralx's, from the show-your-M thread:

567267774_BHai9-XL.jpg
 
Looks great! Far better than any of my poorly done attempts.

Why is the skylight filter on the OUTSIDE of the hood? I put my filters between the hood and the lens.
 
Griptac currently comes in only two colors, charcoal black and a light grey. I have one of the grey kits here in the shop also, and was prepared to use whichever one I thought looked best with this color paint. Held up to the camera body after painting, the grey looked ok, but since I was going for a utilitarian semi-military look, the black won out. Camera Leather has several examples on their website of both black and grey with different cameras. Regardless of color, their recovering kits are unbeatable. Absolutely precise fit, very quick and easy to install. Removal of the old vulcanite and cleaning the dried gunk and glue off took at least 2 hours, but installing the new covering kit took only about 15 minutes and I'd never done one before. I'm sold on Griptac in general. It looks great, and it's rubbery-feeling surface provides an amazingly secure feel. For a working/user camera it's definitely the cat's rear end.
 
lmd91343 said:
Looks great! Far better than any of my poorly done attempts.

Why is the skylight filter on the OUTSIDE of the hood? I put my filters between the hood and the lens.
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Thanks, Lance. If it all falls off like dandruff in six months I'll let you guys know so you don't make the same mistake. I've used a lot of Duracoat on steel, aluminum, nickel, and stainless and it sticks like stink on a baby blanket, but I've never tried it on brass, so I'll keep my fingers crossed. Re the filters, like many folks I have a bunch of extra 49mm and 52mm filters, and use them on several cameras. So I put a 40.5 > 52mm vented hood on it so I can use 52mm filters with my batch of Russian lenses like this Jupiter-8. I do have a few 40.5 filters, but decided I like this setup better and 52mm filters are a dime a dozen, unlike 40.5's, which are a bit hard to find and tend to be expensive. Works just fine, and I have grown to like the look.
Jerry
 
picker77 said:
Here's the result of my first attempt at a Leica M makeover. Looks pretty good so far, it remains to be seen how it holds up getting thrown around inside my truck. Paint is airbrushed two-part catalyzed polymer over brass in "CavArms Foliage Green" color. It's a medium olive-gray in real life, don't know how it will look on your monitor. It has a nice quasi-military look that I like. Recover material is of course one of the excellent kits from CameraLeather in Charcoal Griptac.
Jerry
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beautiful repaint! is that jupiter 8 with adapter? have had problem with infinity on LTM lenses to M body.. 🙁

nice job!
 
Yep, it's a late model J-8 with an M adapter. Only shot one roll with it on this M2 and it looked pretty good, in the past I've been using it mostly on a favorite Fed 3-b that I had CLA'd by Fedka. I did try it on my Zeiss ZI with the same Chinese adapter and it was ok there. I'll get some more testing done soon with it. I also have an Industar 61 L/D, a plain I-61, and an I-26 to try on it. The ZI has a CV-35/1.7 screw mount on it, which works great with a Voigtlander M adapter. Being a low-budget guy where RF's is concerned (except for a Zeiss ZI and a Bronica RF645), most of my lenses are Russian. I'll have to leave the big dollar Leica and Zeiss lenses to those lucky enough to afford them. I do plan to buy a couple more Cosina-Voigtlanders, though, as they are really nice lenses for the money.
 
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