[Leica] Re: Watson loader

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

On Sep 28, 2006, at 6:20 AM, Jeffery asks:

> The Watson uses baffles instead of felt?


The Watson is built like a giant Leica cartridge. There is an inner  
chamber into which you put the 100 ft. roll of bulk film. Outside of  
that there is a rotatable sleeve. Both are contained in the outside  
housing. When the rotatable sleeve is in the closed position, a  
tongue of film is trapped between the inner chamber and the sleeve.  
The film tongue is attached to the cartridge spool with tape, the  
spool inserted into the receiving cartridge and the loading door  
closed. Then the rotatable sleeve is turned a quarter of a turn to  
open the gap between the bulk spool and the takeup spool and the film  
winding crank is turned the requisite number of times to fully load  
the takeup cartridge. The mechanical counter on Watson loaders is  
unreliable so it is better simply count the number of hand cranks. I  
usually use 40 cranks. This gives me a nice leader to trim. When the  
cartridge is filled, the rotatable sleeve is turned back to the light  
tight position, the loading door opened, and the cartridge cut free  
from the bulk film tongue.

Watson loaders have a provision for loading Leica cartridges with  
their own light trap system. A knob opens and shuts the cartridge  
while it is in the loader. If everything is set up correctly there is  
a direct bulk spool to cartridge spool path with no felt traps. This  
insures scratch free loading. Watson loaders also came with a plastic  
shim which compensated for the slight height difference between LTM  
and M cartridges. Most people lose this after a few weeks but it  
really makes little difference.

If not dropped, Watson loaders last forever. There is nothing to wear  
out. Mine is over 40 years old.

Larry Z