Russar 20mm F5.6 Serial 3075 - A CLA post about focusing helicoid.

[renguney]

Hello, I recently got myself a Russar 20mm f5.6 lens. And since I couldnt find any information online about showing how to open the body parts. I wanted to make this post about how to disassemble, clean and relubricate every body parts exluding the optical block.
-
NOTE: for optical block disassembly, please read further from here; [Lens Repair & CLA] Russar MR-2 20mm F5.6ì ë¶í´ ì리.
It's a Korean post from GIGANTOPTIK ( a repairman who work on these old LTM and M lenses) huge thanks to him for helping me out about disassembly by providing me some assistance through some parts.

I came across his website while looking for any source online about Russar repair, his was the only source about this, but excluded the disassembly of body parts, just focussed only to the optical block itself
-

General thoughts: Overall, the Russar is super easy to work on if you ever opened a lens before. I even think it is easier than CLA'ing a I-10 or I-22 lens.
Tools you would need for this -
A clean surface - lots and lots of qtips - acetone - IPA - lens cleaning liquid - some microfiber cloths - various bits of flathead screwdrivers (also very small ones for grub screws)
some plastic cans for cleaning with soapy hot water - couple of toothbrushes - Helical grease (I used Polar bear Studio Extra stiff one) -

Disassembly -



Just unscrew 6 grub screws here



Take off two rings



Locate them separately, but even mixed can be easily divided again (If you still have your eyesight nicely, I'm 24 years old... Would be harder if I was like 60 years old or so. Anyways... do what you want I'm not here to judge you)





Continue disassembly further

 

[renguney]

I couldnt put everything in one post, so I am continuing from here.

After taking off the black ring I mentioned above you should be able to pull this part form the lens just by taking it off with your hand







You should see all sort of disgusting soviet grease inside like this.
Use qtips to take big chunks of it and then use acetone dropped qtips. I lost the count of the qtips that have been used for this russar, more than 40 I guess.



Now, after your cleanup the part should also look like this.



And your parts should look like this




And your parts should look like this if you have disassembled the unit until now.

 

[renguney]

You can use some plastic coverings to protect your parts from getting external dust particles on them while sitting in your desk. But you dont have to if you dont have the gear. I'm not here to judge you like some old grumpy forum members. Do as you please, and do not forget that you're better than the grumpy old fella's because all they do is talk and no act.




You can remove the ''black ring'' which holds the optical block now. I did wrote to remove it but when this ring removed the block simply comes off. I waited until this point and removed like this.
You can see the helicals right now. They were not clean like this, lots of dirt and debris inside. But again, I forgot to take a picture. I get too focused on the repair I usually forgot to take pictures.



Once the helicals disassembled, you can see them in parts like this. On right side you can see the shim (and a screw inside the shim.) that screw is from the helical assembly which I unscrew to disassembly, and that shim is locaed inside that placement that you see on the black part (left side)
I saw lots of dirt and debri here, even on the shim which needs to be perfectly flat. I proceed with cleaning.

This is the orientation of the parts.


(note - that side oritended screw is put wrong on the picture seen above, sorry for inconvenience, it is oriented between the two stopper normally.)

Ok, now it's time to clean the helicals, and every other part. You can use hot soapy water and then brushing everything off, for grime you can use acetone qtips. I'm not here to tell you what you should do in depth. There are other sources where they show more nicely how they would ''clean'' helicals, or do different things.
This post is only for reference so you can see how it's done. By adjusting and cleaning everything you would improve the quality a lot.
For the reference my focus was quite soft that it was misaligned everytime I carried it (by accidental touch, maybe...)
and even it's quite soft, it was still sandy between 0.5m - 2m
I cleaned the helicals and still find that it was sandy. then I noticed that there were still some rock hard grime located in the helicals (super super small, very hard to notice with naked eye) but even that small particles, were making this sandy feeling. I'm telling you this for you to better understand how delicate the focusing helicals are. after 20 minutes of cleaning, they went super smooth in turning and no sandy feeling whatsoever.
I did some testing for lens and found out that for my taste I would use the lens at f5.6 and no other aperture (personal taste)
This because the lens has this very gloomy effect on f5.6 but it reduces the soft contrast and gloom on f8 and below.
(personal - personal - personal)
this lens can take pictures focused from 1meter to infinity, when you set the aperture to F5.6 and focus in between 1.7 and 2m
so, I didnt need any ''soft'' focus. I used
Polar bear Studio - Extra stiff helical grease.
The quality is superb.

Next post -

 

[dexdog]

Impressive work stripping down that old lens, I have never seen one apart before.

 

[renguney]

A little note about the aluminum. Soviet lenses are prone for this defect where aluminum rings have very bad oxidation.
This cannot be improved with only polishing because it would deteriorate in time again since there is nothing to prevent the polished aluminum from oxidation again. You can use this method to clean the aluminum rings (outer rings)

How to fix old soviet aluminum surfaces on lenses;
video: https://youtu.be/aizNoRo2oF0

blog post: http://www.verybiglobo.com/restoring-helios-44-2-cla.../5/

Thanks to verybiglobo for sharing this on web. I'm sure there are other sources too that I'm unaware off. I didn't yet cleaned the aluminum rings on my copy since I don't have the needed brass dremel bit. But looks fairly easy so I'll do it once I'll get the parts. I did try to buff the rings with soft dremel polishing bits but it didnt helped for the records...
The focus is beautiful and it was all I needed... The optics are superb.

Now, some test pictures.
These are made after repair.
I used a Sony A7SII and LTM-E mount adapter for these test pictures.



















I'm actually quite pleased with the soft, dreamy results from this beautiful Russar lens.
I'm going to piss out so bad if someone mentions other lenses such as the 21 voigtlander on this post thread. Go away and make your own threads about ThOsE LeNsEs

Thanks for reading.

 

[renguney]

And here is some ''before CLA'' pictures, taken with Leica IIIF and Fomapan 100 rated at 400 asa
Developed with ''stock'' ID-11 for 14 minutes

All pictures have been taken at F5.6, day pictures all all handheld at 1/10 slow speed dial from IIIF
(it was such a foggy morning in Ankara, Turkey)

Ignore the poor test scan setup (which has focus blur on left side and lots of dust particles.)
Test scan made with Sony A7SII so 12 megapixel digitized scans

 

[renguney]

The film ones are actually the first roll I made after getting the lens. (before the tune up)

 

[renguney]

Impressive work stripping down that old lens, I have never seen one apart before.

Thank you dexdog, please feel free to read the entire thing since you posted before I finished writing and posting everything off! lol