The camera shop owner in Portland told me I was being too gentle with my CLA

I was up at Blue Moon Camera last March dropping off a beat up Nikon F2 for a full service. The owner, this old timer named Mike, watched me handle the thing like it was made of glass and he just shook his head. He said 'you're never gonna get the old gunk out unless you really crank on those screwdrivers, the brass can take it.' I had been babying my tools for years, afraid I'd strip something. He showed me on a junker body how much torque you can actually put on a JIS screw before it gives. Ever since then I've been much more aggressive with my disassembly, and I've cut my cleaning time down by maybe 40 percent. Has anyone else had a mentor tell them to stop being so delicate with old gear?

2 comments

2 Comments

casey_barnes1mo ago

That advice about JIS screws is solid, but one thing to watch out for is that not every old camera body has brass parts in the same places. Some of the early Japanese screwdrivers were actually made of a softer steel, so you can still overtorque them and snap the tip right off. Also, that "cranking on it" method works great for screws that aren't already glued in place with decades of dried lubricant, but on things like the winding mechanism or shutter speed dials, too much force can bend the internal gears. I'd say Mike's right for 90 percent of the work, but it's worth testing the torque on a jammed screw before going full force with a screwdriver on a camera you actually care about.

gibson.oliver1mo ago

A buddy of mine once tried to muscle a stuck screw on a 1959 Pentax S1. He used a regular Philips driver and gave it a good crank, and the driver head just SHEARED clean off inside the screw slot. Took him three days with a tiny drill bit and a lot of bad language to get the remnants out. So yeah, that torque test is REAL important, especially on cameras that have been sitting in a garage for thirty years.