Old timer at a shop in Portland told me to stop cleaning shutter blades with lighter fluid

He said the naphtha eats the lubrication on the pivots over time and showed me a Pentax Spotmatic that had seized up after years of that method. Switched to Ronsonol and a tiny bit of watch oil instead, anyone else gotten similar advice from the older guys?

4 comments

4 Comments

young.michael17h ago

Did that shop also give you the special watch oil recipe, @flores.emma?

brookeellis1d ago

That lighter fluid thing is wild. My buddy ruined his dad's old Minolta that way, just dried out the whole mechanism over a few years and it locked up solid. Took him forever to find someone who could even fix it.

flores.emma1d ago

Wait did the lighter fluid actually seep into the lens barrel or was it just the body seals? @brookeellis I'm wondering if the guy could've caught it early by storing it with a silica gel pack or something. Also curious what kind of repair shop actually took it on, because most places around here would just say it's toast.

angela_morgan17h ago

That whole thing reminds me of this old Nikon F2 I picked up at a garage sale that reeked of cigarette smoke. I figured, just let it air out, right? Nope. The smoke had basically fused to the leatherette and the foam inside the prism was disintegrating from it. Took me a weekend with alcohol swabs and a steady hand to even get it usable, and I still had to replace the light seals myself. So yeah, sometimes the damage is deeper than you think, not just a quick dry-out fix.