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Chat with a retired repair shop owner got me rethinking my methods on sticky shutters
He told me he never used lighter fluid for cleaning shutter blades, just a tiny drop of dish soap and water on a Q-tip. Tried it on a beat up Pentax K1000 yesterday and the blades snapped back faster than any fluid I've used. Has anyone else gone back to basic cleaning tricks like this?
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piperbailey2mo ago
Ha! I feel attacked because I've definitely been that guy huffing lighter fluid fumes over a stuck shutter like some kind of amateur chemist. Tried the soap and water trick on an old Minolta X-700 that had blades slower than me on Monday morning and it actually worked. The gunk just melted away without leaving that weird residue lighter fluid always seems to leave behind. Makes you wonder how many other "pro tips" are just complicating something that was simple all along, right?
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oscarc122mo ago
Yeah the lighter fluid thing always left this weird film on everything. I switched to 91% isopropyl alcohol and a qtip for shutter blades, works way better. Just got to be careful not to bend anything.
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the_lisa1mo ago
My buddy Mike tried that soap trick on a Canon AE-1 last week and said the shutter fired up like new after 20 years of sitting in a garage. @piperbailey you're right, sometimes the simple stuff works way better than all the fancy chemicals.
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ryan_shah382mo ago
Dave from my camera club tried gas station hand soap on his F2 and said it fixed it perfectly.
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