    
Toomanycams
Tinkerer
Username: Toomanycams
Post Number: 5
Registered: 05-2008
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, June 15, 2008 - 03:50 pm: | 
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A friend brought me an Argus C44 the other night, along with an extra Tele lens. I didn't tell him I already had a C44 on display (and a C4, a C4 Geiss, a C44r and a Markfinder 21). You don't want to discourage friends from giving you free cameras!
It turned out that the new camera had a broken shutter (the mainspring) so I decided to just keep it as a parts camera. Its top cover was nicer than my working version so I proceeded to swap the two. Rick Oleson's sketches made the job easy.
Of course with the top off you'll want to clean the viewfinder/rangefinder. Some windex and a soft towel worked pretty well. It was hard to get to the back of some of the viewfinder lenses so I used a Q tip. Mist a little windex on one end of the Q tip to clean. Keep the other end dry to buff. The semi silvered mirror cleaned without any incident. You should always test a corner of these because the partly reflective/partly transmissive coatings sometimes are fragile and wipe right off. (Did that to a Nicca, sorry to say.) The coating on the Argus was tough enough to clean.
Once cleaned, I was amazed by the contrast of the rangefinder. The mirror is of the type that looks through a little blue and reflects a warmer tone, not like the Zeiss and Russian cameras that have the Gold/Green tints. Anyhow, the rangefinder patch is very bright and easy to use and greatly improved by cleaning. The overall job was so easy and the results so nice that I ended up taking the top off of two other C4/44s and the Markfinder 21, to clean all of their viewfinders.
One other tip for those that like these cameras has to do with typically stiff focusing. The main focusing wheel rotates in a largish cradle with a lot of surface area. This was gunked up with dried lubricant. The usual flood cleaning (lighter fluid) got it moving much easier. This is the kind of surface that should have grease rather than oil, but it isn't easy to get grease into it. I finally mixed some white Lithium grease with a little oil so that I could more easily work it into the perimeter...Worked real nice.
The bonus is that focusing is now silky smooth for all of my C4 family. All of the rough focusing was down to the viewfinder wheel and not the lenses, which I didn't dissasemble.
I highly recommend these cameras for those that want to try some easy repairs. They are easy to work on and generally work well. The shutters can be "flood cleaned" if they are a little slugish. Once cleaned up the cameras are handsome. The C44 with its 4 element lens is quite sharp. All this and made in the USA...
Regards,
David Smith |
