Got a tip from an old camera shop owner in Portland that saved me hours on shutter curtain repairs

I was up in Portland last month helping a friend clean out his uncle's old camera store that's been closed since 2019. The uncle was a real character, lived above the shop for 40 years. While we were boxing up parts, he found a box of old brass shims and started talking about how he used to fix stuck shutter curtains on old focal plane shutters by adjusting the tension with a tiny drop of lighter fluid on the pivot points instead of fully disassembling them. I always thought you had to tear the whole thing down to get at those curtains. He showed me his method on a beat up Nikon F from the back room and I'll be darned, it worked perfectly. Saved me probably 2 hours of labor on a job I had waiting back at my bench. I've already tried it on a couple more cameras since I got home and it's held up fine. Has anyone else run into old shop tricks like this that sound crazy but actually work?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_mary7d ago

Lighter fluid: the WD-40 of the camera repair world.

faithpatel7d ago

Wait, are we really out here treating lighter fluid as a legit fix instead of just doing the job right?