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Author Message   Jeff Polaski Tinkerer Username: Polaski Post Number: 4 Registered: 08-2006 Rating: N/A Votes: 0 Posted on Monday, August 28, 2006 - 10:56 am:    No success over the weekend. Got some commercial rust remover from the hardware store (w/rubber gloves): active ingredient seems to be dilute hydrofluric acid. The rust I could reach gets cleaned off. Parts of this camera back are really clean. But, peeking carefully into the section under the middle of the spring-mounted pressure plate, I see lines of rust between the (hopefully) moveable cams and the back plate of the camera.It looks like the moving parts are "glued" by rust to the flat camera back. Repeated applications don't seem to make a dent. Worse, the spring that works the mechanism is rusty. It came unhooked as I probed back there. I could probably hook it back into place, but its condition looks bad. This is pretty much the camera I have (credit to Matt Denton for his writeup). http://www.mattdentonphoto.com/cameras/v_bessa_69.html I'm at the point that I think I will not be able to salvage the nifty dual film number window counter feature. Add that to the fact that: 1. the shutter has a little knob up top that seems to lock a cocked shutter, but has been forced over the years and is best left disengaged; 2. the pop-up dual format optical viewfinder cover no longer latches closed (catch on the body missing -- probably a velcro solution here) and I figure I might have to go to plan B. Plan B would be to detach the pressure plate from the camera back (not likely to be reversable since it uses many rivits), remove the red-window cover mechanism entirely, and remount the pressure plate, sans springs (they are really wobbly), with maybe some 1/4 inch pads of compressible foam at each corner of the pressure plate. Iwould then wind film by remembering which number goes where (you know, the old-fashioned way). The thing is, I'm really enjoying working on this camera (my first crack at repair), but I am primarily interested in using it as a 6x4.5 format user. Comments about the insoluble rust-between-2-flat-pieces-of-metal problem, and the foam pad solution would be very, very welcome.