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     Arnoldharris Tinkerer Username: Arnoldharris Post Number: 35 Registered: 07-2006 Rating: N/A |
The only camera whose working mechanisms I know well is the Voigtlander Vitessa-T rangefinder (1956-1958), of which I have a large collection. The Synchro-Compur 00-MXV "Wide" CN-1110-030 shutter in this camera is relatively easy to remove from its carrier, for purposes of thorough cleaning with naptha, followed by only the tiniest amount of the lightest shutter gear oil applied to the star wheel and pallet on the eacapement gear train. That has enabled me to get numerous partially or fully stuck shutters working again, at all speeds from B through 500, without sending the cameras to a repair shop. Any attempts to pull these shutters apart further than that, I would not advise, other than for people who have the skills of Rick Oleson, most of whose online advice I have carefully read in the past few years. Is there likely to be dessicated and hardened lubricants both on the shutter blades and on other shutter parts? Why would anyone think otherwise, considering that these cameras came out of their German factory 50 years ago or more, and that many of them never have been cleaned and re-lubricated at all, or were lubricated in all the wrong places by people who didn't know better? As for shutter timing, I've done this visually on all the cameras in my collection. With both the lens and caseback easily removable, and with the shutter installed, it is easy to test the Vitessa-T at all speeds, for which I use my bright computer screen as a light source which I can see through the shutter blades. In my experience, the lower speeds have been the ones that I found frozen up on most of the Vitessa-T units I've bought on eBay or elsewhere in recent years. (That, and problems with the film advance, shutter cocking and film release mechanisms and their interlocks, is probably what made them relatively affordable. These other problems are relatively easy to fix, once you have figured them out. But taking apart shutters is another story.) So those low speeds are one the ones to which I pay closest attention. And I have found that if the lower speeds are relatively accurate, so too are the higher speeds. I'm not sure that what I have described here is the "right" way. But it certainly has worked for me. Arnold Harris Mount Horeb WI |