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[45PSS]

I have two of these beast, one with Kodak Commerical Ektar glass and the other with Ilex-Calument Caltar glass, both 12" f6.3, and neither would fire a flash.
The ektar is crudely engraved on the side of the front barrell US Govt and the front element looked as if someone made a pass with 00000000 steel wool plus a couple of dings. Lens element would not unscrew completely.
Caltar clean nicely coated glass.
With three days off, and no money to go anywhere I disassembled the ektar shutter. Upon touching the lead connected to the flash bipost farthest from the shuter release, slight pressure at the "V" in it resulted in it breaking into 3 pieces.
Continuing to disassemble the badly corroded flash sync system revealed a missing spring that moves the contact for the other post.
Now wsith everything flash related removed from the housing, I polished the metal pieces with fine synthetic steel wool, broken fragments included. Then I started reassembling the post to the housing, ect. Next I striped the insulation off a length of #18 solid copper wire and flattened it with needle nose pliers. Laying the broken contact strip out in order, forming the flattened copper wire to shape then tinning it, I soldered it to the broken strips and installed it into the shutter housing. It took a few tries.
By now I've forgotten the order of the parts and now have to open the caltar's shutter for guidence. I used my Fuji Finepix 2650 to doucement each segment of disassembly this time and made sure that the images were clear at full screen before taking the next part off.
Now I pulled the reminants of a Yashica TL Electro I bought new and canabalized years ago, and found a suitable spring for material. From this I made a new spring for the shutter.
Next I continued the routine of photographing the caltar shuter, removing a part, photographing the result, then assembling the corresponding part on the ektar shutter.
Now the Ektar is assembled and the caltar is diasaaembled. The caltar is corroded (more like sliver tarnish, both shutters) and the plastic dial wheel for M F X sync is cracked from solvent use.

Connecting a METZ to the gleaming bipost, turning the lights off, cocking the shutter and flash, and firing - no flash at X setting. Rotating sync wheel 10 ⁰ toward F, the flash will fire. With apeture set to 6.3 and on 1/2 second shutter speed, shutter blades just visable in outter 3/32 of lens opening when flash fires. I am unable to judge visually if sufficent delay will occur to sync M or F type bulbs or not.

I suspect that strobe will be just fine.

Any tips before I finish the caltar's shutter?

Futher inspection of the Ektar revealed the barrel was bent along the outer edge from improper use of a strap wrench. I got my 4 inch vice grips out and a piece of dense foam. I placed the foam over the bend and griped it with the vice grips tightly, and took the bend out. Next I took the smallest common screwdriver from a Stanely jeweler's set, and using a magnifing light, proceded to debur the threads and stab myself in the finger. The aluminum barrel is soft and just holding it tightly is enough to cause the lens element not to unscrew. Once lense element removed, I cleaned all the glass with a heavyweight microfiber lens cleaning cloth after gently blowig off any metal filings. Minor scratches all but disappeared, and to my susprise, the flaws were/are air bubles in the glass!

Charles

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While a picture may be worth a thousand words, a quality photograph is worth a million.

[ This Message was edited by: 45PSS on 2003-07-06 20:00 ]