Removing Jammed winder knob, Fed 1

[Ramon-uk]

With my recent intermittent B problem I needed to remove the winder knob from my NKVD Fed 1 but after 60 odd years of being in place it was very reluctant to move. Not wishing to put too much strain on the gears I took the take-up spool holder off the winder spindle and gripped the spindle with a pair of mole grips. That's when I found out that the spindle is only screwed into the cog, so now I had the knob jammed on the cog and with no way of holding it.
I did consider jamming the cog with a screwdriver but considered that would probably only damage the teeth.

So I search the junkbox for a suitable tool. I found an old shutter drum and spindle from a Zenit E, stripped off all the drum so that I just had the spindle and the little cog. By cutting off one side of the cog it became the perfect tool.

By engaging the cog of my new tool with both the winder cog and the intermediate cog the whole winder mechanism becomes locked solid so that I could then apply much more pressure to the winder knob.

The picture below shows the tool in place, ( the winder spindle and take up spool holder is removed in this picture)

 

[wolves3012]

Neat solution! In actual fact, the FED 1 and Zorki 1 use a 1-way clutch, made up of a coiled spring attached by the small plate on the right of your photo. The rest of it wraps around the winder shaft.

Turning in the wind-direction tends to uncoil the spring but turning the opposite way coils it up until it grips the shaft. The gears shouldn't take much strain, although you could break the spring with enough force so your method was probably safer.

 

[Ramon-uk]

Turning in the wind-direction tends to uncoil the spring but turning the opposite way coils it up until it grips the shaft.

That was part of the problem, because one turn of the spring had come out from under the cog then it wasn't gripping properly. The picture was taken after the repair so you can't see the spring as it was originally.