"Cleaning" reverse side of in-lens aperture leafs

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btgc

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Just wanted to share my experience with Lynx 5000, which could be used in any fixed lens rangefinder with in-lens leaf shutter. I know what means properly cleaned shutter - complete dismantle and cleaning each single leaf with it's separate Ronsonolized earbud, not restricting to single one, usually they go more per leaf. With Lynx I were tired of this and tried to go fast track - just cleaned/operated/cleaned visible area of leafs while front elements removed. We all know this is "not supported" way of cleaning leafs.
To clean reverse side of aperture leafs without complete disassembly of shutter, rear element has to be removed (another lazy shortcut). I were lazy this time. I made small pillow from lens cleaning paper, moistened it with ronsonol (not too much not to flood glass) and put over rear element to go slightly under aperture blades. Thin eneough to keep inside rear element's bed. Thick enough to touch aperture leafs when aperture is closed. Sure, during this excersize shutter must be opened in Bulb and fixed with release cable. Once pillow is installed, I started to close and open aperture, replacing pillows with clean and trying to cover as wide area as I can. Paper came out with those yellow-brown deposits we clean off front surfaces too. Number of iterations may vary, but general mailstone is that summary time should be times shorter than removal of rear element - to maintain time-efficiency of method :)

*** Caution should be taken to ensure that release cable (or anything one is going to use) is not letting shutter to close suddenly when you install pillow with toothpick.

I'm not advertising this method as silver bullet nor replacement of proper shutter cleaning, but maybe this helps anyone.

UPD1: day after this posting 5000 got stuck shutter leafs. So I used "paper method" also for shutter leafs. With two toothpicks gently entered strip of paper between leafs, then moistened with lighter fluid (not flushing, just touching paper strip with moistened earbud) and then gently moved strip with toothpick forth and back, left and right. There's one leaf which isn't accessible such way, but let's see.
 
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