The Lube Trick That Saves Shutter Blades Every Time

I was working on a Canon AE-1 last week and the shutter blades were sticking like crazy. Spent like 2 hours cleaning them with naphtha, still no luck. Then I remembered an old mechanic buddy telling me about using a tiny, I mean tiny, drop of synthetic watch oil on the pivot points. I got a bottle of Moebius 8000 for like $12 on Amazon. Put the smallest dab on a toothpick and touched it to the blade pivots. Fired the shutter at 1/1000 and it snapped like new. Found out after asking around that most repairers just replace the whole shutter assembly for these old cameras, but this saved me a ton of time and money. Has anyone else tried oiling pivots instead of full replacement?

3 comments

3 Comments

henryt1812d ago

Tiny drop of oil on the pivots" will eventually migrate onto the blades and ruin them.

the_sean12d ago

@henryt18 nailed it, oil always finds a way to mess things up later.

jenny_lane1212d ago

Respectfully disagree @the_sean, a controlled drop works fine with the right oil.