Hi Guys,
Bought an Ansco Memar off of eBay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=230269842099&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=013
Everything seems to work fine, except two problems:
1. The Distance setting ring won't budge. I need this ring to move to focus the camera, but it won't move. Everything else moves - aperture, shutter speed, etc.
2. The bulb exposure setting sticks.
I can live with the bad bulb setting, but the stuck focusing ring is not helpful.
Thanks,
Pradeep
That's par for the course with vintage Agfas and Anscos. They used a type of lubricant that, over 50 years or so, reacts with the brass, turns green, and polymerizes (hardens like plastic, with about the consistency of road tar). Solvents have little effect since one thing it
does do really well is act as a waterproof caulk. Only heat will soften it enough to (slowly and with some effort) unscrew the parts. Once you have it apart, you can take a pin and pick all the green crud out of the screw threads, replace it with a good grease, and reassemble it.
The procedure, for a Memar, is covered in detail here:
http://www.rolandandcaroline.co.uk/apotar.html BTW, be
VERY careful when tightening the little set screws around the focusing ring. They are made of aluminum and it is
VERY easy to break the heads off of them.
The sticky bulb exposure setting is a lot easier to fix. You have sticky shutter blades. You're going to have to remove the front and middle lens elements anyway (where they screw together is the part that you need to unstick for focusing). Once removed, this will allow you access to the shutter blades. Remove the rear element too and just clean the blades with naptha (lighter fluid) and cotton swabs. Do this 50 or so times, working the blades between cleanings (no, I'm not kidding, 50; you have to get every slightest trace of crud off of the blades or it just redeposits when the lighter fluid dries out and sticks again, maybe worse than before). You'll go through a lot of swabs and it's tedious, but it isn't particularly difficult. Mop the naptha on with a wet swab, work shutter a couple of times, mop it up with the other dry end, discard swab, repeat, repeat, repeat ad nauseum.
While you're at it, set your shutter for one second and see if it really is one second. If it isn't you will also need to clean the shutter's gearing. To do that, you remove the cam plate (the slotted plate that covers the gears) and clean out the gears with naptha and an artist's paintbrush.
