Its an old 120 size film SLR camera, and my Dad gave me his old camera that had not been used for years and needed some attention and that I thought I might enjoy using.
Anyway, as I said, it needed some maintenance since it had not been used in years. So, I was trying to "loosen up" the shutter (its a leaf-shutter type camera rather than the more common focal plane type shutter of most SLR cameras) and aperture settings in the lens which were a bit sticky with lack of use... and with no film in the camera I was winding and firing the shutter in quite rapid succession.
Somehow I managed to get the winding mechanism jammed so that it would not wind forward and would not fire the shutter.
I tried removing the lense and pushing all the buttons and twiddling everything I could but it would not budge... and I dared not force the winder forward because I felt sure it would break something inside.
What to do?... well, go check out the internet of course... Which I did and I found a fair number of posts in various places that sounded like my stuck winder problem but absolutely no solutions to the problem that applied to my situation... I tried the suggestions I found but my problem was different it seemed... And the only clear response for the more complicated problems was a recurrent statement of send it off to so-and-so in the US who is the repair wizard guy for these old cameras... oh and by the way it will cost you several hundred dollars to get it fixed!
Not what I wanted to hear.
So, undeterred I decided that Id have a go at it myself, and after quite a struggle I did manage to fix it without damaging anything else... And the fix in my case was not too complicated and I think others could do it so Ive decided to share that fix here.
The Fix
1) You will need to peel off the vinyl covering on the winder hub... Its held on with contact adhesive so its quite a job to get it off, but that's what you have to do to get at the 4x little screws that hold the winder top plate in place... Be careful to not tear the vinyl (It can be reglued onto the cover after)
2) Remove the 4x small screws with a very small Philips-head screwdriver.
3) Remove the winder cover plate... which is now held in place by the winding lever spring plate so you have to lift an edge and slide it out.
4) Now you have to remove the winder which means undoing the two central screws in the middle... Don't worry about the little ratchet mechanism cos if you are careful it will all stay exactly in place as you lift the winder up off the camera. If things do get disturbed though, its no problem to put the little cog back between the "gripping levers" when you reassemble it all.
5) Now you need to get access to the 5x small screws that hold the camera side cover on... Again you need to peel back the covering Vinyl to get at them... I have a picture here so you can see where the 5x screws are so you need not fully peel off the vinyl. (Note there is also a slightly larger 6th hole there that has no use that I can see)
6) Now the side cover should simply lift up off the camera and reveal the guts of the mechanical mechanisms in the camera body (very scary!)
7) Right now we are ready to fix things... But to explain Ill show a couple of pictures... These two are of the camera mechanuism in loaded and in fired positions respectively... almost no difference right!
and here is a third one with the mechanism in the "jammed configuration"...
The difference appears very minor (mostly in the subtle position of the L-shaped lever on the right and a small nub of a lever sticking out from under the brass center hub near it..
And when you fire the shutter, that little lever snaps clockwise full circle around the winder hub.
But when you fire the shutter and wind the film advance knob at the same time, things can get out of synch and the little lever only manages a portion of the rewind circuit.
So... How to fix it
I held the firing button in (ie in "fired" position) and I used a poker (ie very small screwdriver) to release that little lever from being stuck... It releases in little "leaps" when you push it in the anti-clockwise direction, so you have to poke it from several angles and chase it back to the start position on the left side of the winding hub... … You know its in the fully fired position when it stops spring releasing and is just loosely sitting there.
And that's all you have to do!
Now if you temporarily put the winder back on with the two screws, you should find that its all working as it should be... The winder retracts the mirror and advances the film and then levers-through and keeps winding but without resistance and the camera is ready to fire... Test it out a few times and then you can reassemble the side cover and winder in reverse order and you are good to go. The vinyl coverings can be re used with some carefully applied contact adhesive too of course.
Anyway, that's my fix... Hope it helps someone :)
cheers
Grant
