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Author Message   Michael_qrt Tinkerer Username: Michael_qrt Post Number: 3 Registered: 02-2011 Rating: N/A Votes: 0 Posted on Saturday, February 12, 2011 - 06:14 am:    Well. I got the front cell off... and I don't think I've broken or lost anything. Let's just say I hope I don't have to do anything like that again anytime soon. I ended up having to use a different method, as hammering away still didn't cause the front cell to budge. I started a set of wire cutters, tapping away on a small flat blade screwdriver in the slots, alternating every couple of blows. I kept increasing the force gradually but nothing was happeneing so I got out a real hammer and kept increasing the force till I had to stop. It just wasn't working, the slots were mangled, hitting harder was only going to end in disaster. I thought if I could somehow remove the shutter unit from the body with the front cell still attached I could apply more leverage. I manager to do this by removing the three screws holding the shutter unit in, as pointed out in Henry's tutorial. Of course I wasn't able to remove the ring that links the focus and aperture in flash mode, and this blocks one of the screws. I removed what Henry calls the 'shoulder screw' on this ring and was able to push it out of the way enough to access the screw. Then I removed the front plate from the body and also removed the shutter 'clockwork' from the lens unit to be able to wiggle free the shutter housing. Now with the shutter housing removed I could get much better access to the ring holding the front cell. The method I finally employed was to set the shutter housing in a vise and use some pliers/grippers to grip the front cell. I initially tried padding the ring with some pieces of rubber as the grippers have some pretty aggressive teeth but it all kept slipping. After abandoning the rubber and accepting that the ring will get heavily marred I was having trouble with the shutter unit housing slipping in the vise. Finally I aligned some of the notches in the shutter housing with the vise surfaces and cranked the vise down as tightly as I could and was able to get the front cell loose. The grippers I was using have 25cm (10 inch) long handles and I was applying really a lot of force to them. I almost couldn't believe it when it moved. Now the challenge is to clean out the shutter blades and turn this pile of parts in front of me back into a camera.