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Showerthought: a stripped lens mount screw on a Canon AE-1 in my Boston shop taught me to stop rushing
A guy brought in a beat up AE-1 on a Tuesday morning and I went straight for the mount screws with my JIS driver, but I grabbed the wrong size and chewed up the head of the top left one. I sat there for 20 minutes with a rubber band and a tiny flathead trying not to make it worse, and finally got it to bite just enough to back out. Now I keep three JIS sizes laid out in order before I touch anything, and that one screw sits in a little jar on my bench as a reminder. Has anyone else wrecked a screw head and found a trick that actually works better than the rubber band method?
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piperbailey11d ago
So a screw got chewed up and now it lives in a jar on your bench like some kind of trophy? I get being careful, but let's be real here, a stripped screw on a 40 year old camera is not some big life lesson about slowing down. Anyone who has worked on old gear has mangled a screw head at some point, it happens, you get it out, you move on. The rubber band trick works fine for most folks, and if it doesn't, a tiny bit of valve grinding compound on the tip of your driver gives way better grip than rubber ever will. Keeping three JIS sizes lined up is just good practice, not some deep wisdom you had to learn the hard way. Sometimes a screw is just a screw.
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