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Author Message   Scott Tinkerer Username: Scott Post Number: 51 Registered: 07-2006 Rating: N/A Votes: 0 Posted on Monday, October 26, 2009 - 09:23 am:    I have also looked at Mr. Mitchell's site, and there's a lot of good advice there, and excellent photos of the insides of shutters. My assumption is that he may just enjoy the process of taking them completely apart down to removing and cleaning each individual shutter and aperture blade. And I'm sure it's a nice feeling to know that every single piece is perfectly clean. But you seldom have to go that far if you just want to get a sluggish shutter working again. With "between the lens" leaf shutters, most of the problems will be related to too much friction on the blades themselves, rather than with any problem in the "clockwork" inside the shuter mechanism. The friction is usually due to oil getting on the blades. That's why naptha is so often used to clean the blades. To do it properly, you do have to remove at least the front part of the lens and sometimes also the rear part of the lens in order to get at the shutter blades. But taking out the lenses is usually not hard to do if you have some tiny screwdrivers. "Flush" cleaning, I assume, is when someone tries to clean a shutter by squirting large amounts of solvent into it, usually without removing the shutter from the camera and without removing the lens glass. Probably makes the camera unusable until it is overhauled completely for cleaning. I'd recommend not putting more than 3-4 drops of solvent on the blades at a time, and letting that evaporate before doing it again. Put 2-3 drops of solvent directly onto the closed blades, then turn the cameras this way and that, letting it run down into the part of the shutter that you can't see, then work the shutter a few times before it evaporates. Then, a couple more drops, and wipe the blades with a wad of soft paper in a tweezers, and blow out any debris. Don't let it run onto the rear lens element. Repeat a couple of times, and that usually does it. If it doesn't, then maybe the "dan mitchell" treatment is your only hope I use the lighter fluid that is sold for zippo-type cigarrette lighters, but I have heard that the stuff people squirt on a charcoal grill is the same thing.