How To Smooth Metal Film Guides

[D437]

I have an old Dejur D1 which scratches the emulsion in several places on rewind (not on forward). You can see why on the attached photos--one has arrows pointing to the three locations. Not sure how this happened originally but as you see with the film moving to the left on rewind it would come in contact with those three rough/raised areas. I'm wondering about solutions or recommended grades of emery paper to use on it --probably while someone else holds a vacuum right there to keep the filings out of the camera. then I'd have to paint smoothly. Perhaps it could be unbent if hit very precisely...??

 

[mdarnton]

That looks like aluminum. I'd burnish the bits back down with the backside of a steel teaspoon and call it done until further evidence that this didn't work.

No emery paper! It doesn't come fine enough. Other papers do, but you're likely to make a mess of it.

 

[Bill58]

Flitz? I use it on watch crystals and silver and it works fine.

 

[ssmc]

Agree that it looks like aluminum. Another alternative if you have steady hands is to "shave" the bumps off with an X-Acto knife (use a new blade!) I know it sounds weird but you can carve little bits of even hardened alloy with one of these. Tape up the rest of the camera with Magic Tape (or similar) that won't leave any residue.

Don't cut yourself!

 

[Dwig]

That section of the film gate shouldn't be touching the film at all. The inner guide rails should be holding the film away from it. The fix is not necessarily to "smooth" that area, but instead to lower it so that it doesn't contact the film at all.

I would recommend cutting with a knife or using a file. A file won't add its own "sheddings" to the removed metal increasing the cleaning necessary. I've used fine and extra fine diamond "files" to do this type of work in the past, things like cutting away f/stop rings when doing Nikon Ai conversions and converting a Graphic 6x6 film back to 6x12.

These Eze-Lap files are the ones I've use most often:
http://www.amazon.com/EZE-LAP-PAK-C...?ie=UTF8&qid=1409446135&sr=8-1&keywords=ezlap

 

[Dan Daniel]

An extra-fine sharpening stone can lap such surfaces.

You can put a tape like duct tape inside the camera with the adhesive facing up to catch particles as they drop.

 

[D437]

Great suggestions, thanks so much. A friend suggested chiseling with a sharp screwdriver, and i thought perhaps putting some kind of tape over that area would be the easiest. Since this is a German made camera from 1955 by Neidig (think they made the Braun Paxette) they are made like tanks and quite heavy for their size. Don't know if they would have used aluminum then. I've read that the camera is made from one piece of metal...Anyway thanks again.

 

[Tom A]

You might try some very thin teflon tape before surgery!