June 2004 Edition

By Elliott Swanson

After seeing it untouched for 3 hours (and marked 5 bucks!) on a dealer's table at the Puyallup Camera Show, I bought a small beam splitter attachment. I didn't even haggle. It was covered with crud and corrosion, and the mirrors were fried.

Well, after a little TLC, and cutting/beveling some new front surface mirror glass, it's back to fully operational condition. One very cool feature is the tiny bubble level on top. There's an attachment rail in front of the bubble level, probably designed for some sort of outboard viewfinder or perhaps a flash. On the bottom of the gadget is a 1/4-20 threaded tripod hole.

This unit is called a "Stereo Master Beam Splitter Attachment", using an obvious rip off of the View Master logo, and was manufactured by the Tokyo Camera Company. Ben Melton supplied me with some thin mirror glass I was able to cut via a carbide cutter, so after restoration, I sent the "Stereo Master" on to Ben for his collection. BTW cutting front surface mirror glass is a real chore-- the glass is annealed very hard, so you have to cut on a perfectly flat surface, use carbide or diamond, and use a lot of pressure. Too much pressure and the stuff fragments...