The Disassembly, Part #1
Posted on Thursday October 2nd, 2008
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Leica iiic, factory converted to a iiif. Purchased from Ebay in a non-functioning condition. Stripped the camera, rebuilt the escapement, cleaned and lubed all the gearing, now the shutter fires like butter. Stay tuned for the re-assembly…
October 2nd, 2008 at 3:03 pm
oooh! That looks like a lot of fun actually. This reminds me… I’ve got a rangefinder with a busted rangefinder. I might just have to tear it apart and see if I can get it going again (or at least buy another broken camera for a new rangefinder mechanism). Any idea what would make the ragefinder stop working? I got nothing — just the framing box.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:10 pm
It really depends on the camera and the type of rangefinder. Nine times out of ten, it turns out to be a few decades worth of dirt jamming things up. If you have frame lines but no split image, it may be that the mirror in the rangefinder needs to be re-silvered or replaced.
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Well… I fixed it, but I don’t know how. I just pulled the top off the camera and it sort-of started working again. Had to lube one of the pivots to make it fully functional again, but it seems to be working now. The split image is now there, but it’s a little faint. I might eventually pull it back apart and clean up some of the surfaces and the front window.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianauer/2909955508/
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Yeah, that’s usually the case. Open them up, move things around a bit, dump out the dirt and they perk right up.