Help - Isolette shutter reassmebly

[jmain]

Yesterday's flea market finds included an Isolette for a few dollars. Several of the diaphragm blades were not seated properly so, not having much money in this and out of curiosity I opened the shutter. All is well except I don't have enough hands to reassemble the diaphragm blades. Does anyone have a clever way of doing this? Thanks

[Mike Wilde]

I had your woes in a past shutter of this ilk. Getting the bits back into place tested my skills for a few days too.

The way I did get them back into place was to very lightly coat them with some sewing machine oil, so that they would stay in place wrt to sticking to each other. A tip of a tooth pick worth of oil where the two points needed to join was enough.

I put the blades back on their posts using the narrow and wide ends of flat tooth picks as tiny tools. I held about 4 toothpicks in one hand to keep the blades in place when it was time to flip the last one's tip under those of the others already put into in place. Then, without trying to actuate the oil coated shutter, I reassembled the whole works retainer plate.

Then I soaked and bathed this assembly a couple of times in naptha to dissolve the oil.

I then shook as much naphta out as I could, and took the hair dryer to it.

Gingerly I worked to manually open the shutter, and then used naptha on bits of cotton wrapped to a tooth pick to spot dissolve any oil that showed signs of hanging around.

I then excercised it manually a few more times for a few days to get the last of the naptha gone.

I find it works fine entirely dry, depaite showing signs of having a bit of graphite in place originallly.

Good luck. It is not an easy task to accomplish.

It will give you heaps more confidence to try to conquer other shutter and aperture diapham repairs though, if the rest of the camera looks good enough to make the shutter repair worth the effort.

The next challenge I predict for you will be for bellows repair. I use a black RTV gasket making material. Sometiems with a toothpick; sometiems with the end of my index finger, where the whole of the plastic material has wond off of the edge fold of the plastic stuff that Agfa made their bellows of 50-60 years ago, that inevitably has gone to crap.

[elekm]

Are you talking about the shutter blades or the aperture blades?

[edp]

F or reassembling the aperture blades there's no substitute for patience. Fit them back together in the fully-open position. The first few are simple, but the rest need to be interleaved, and getting the little pin on the hidden end into its slot without tipping all the blades onto the table takes a few goes, leading to some frustration, but it will work eventually. The second time you do it it will be a lot easier, just because you know it can be done.

[jmain]

I'm working with the 10 pieces that make the aperture. Thanks for the comments and words of encouragement!

[John Koehrer]

It requires a little(?) patience. I've found that placing the shutter on an empty film canister helpsa bit. Gets the thing off the bench & you can brace the housing with one hand while installing the blades with the other three.