Ilex shutter - loose spring...

[pjd]

I recently bought a batch of camera gear that had been neglected for many years, including a lens in Ilex shutter. The shutter was dead on arrival - and non-returnable, part of a batch of "junk parts". Upon removing the front cover it became apparent that a spring has come loose. I've attached a photo, the spring is on the post it note to the right. Sorry for the blurry photo.

Does anyone know where this spring should be located within the shutter? I'm aware that the ideal would be to send this to Carol Flutot, but I'm in Korea and shipping anything back and forth to the states would cost more than the value of the lens. It might not even be repairable, though the mechanism does have signs of life. I might be able to find a tech in Korea, not sure yet. I've had success with compound shutters in the past but know little of Ilex shutters.

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[Kino]

Try this page: https://pheugo.com/cameras/index.php

Hope it helps.

[pjd]

Try this page: https://pheugo.com/cameras/index.php

Hope it helps.

Thank you, it is helpful. I'm leaving it for the time being until I have some free time.

[pjd]

To update my own thread, I was able to figure this out. The Ilex General shutter is quirky, but there aren't that many parts to disassemble.

The spring that had come loose fits on the underside of the lever shown in the first photo of this post, the lever that triggers the shutter. To remove that lever, another lever, a spring and a screw have to be removed.

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[pjd]

When correctly reassembled (which took some trial and error) the shutter was still not firing reliably; there was a lot of gunk and debris in the shutter. I removed the shutter blades to clean, and also the plate shown in this photo:

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After removing this, I took out the metal ring that rotates to activate the shutter blades, that was sort of a mistake. Removing that ring allows a spring to slip loose on the other side of the shutter. That meant stripping down the shutter far more than I'd wanted to, in order to replace the spring (just about visible) in this photo:

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This is probably not of much interest, but I upload these photos in case someone else ever wants to work on one of these shutters. It was probably a good thing to disassemble a long way, as I was able to clean up a lot more gunk, and also it became obvious where a little lubrication might help. I used a tiny amount of Moebius 8000/4 watch oil on a couple of pivots, it's still working as intended a couple of days after reassembly, but only time will tell if this lubrication was correct in this application.

[pjd]

The thick spring in the middle of this photo:

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Will fly if given opportunity, be careful when removing it. That spring, and the screw holding a thin spring to the left of the thick spring will also need to be removed to take that lever out.

This part:

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controls B & T settings, I had some trouble getting this to work while reassembling. Just be patient and take a break if things don't work at first before coming back and trying again.

Overall I'm impressed by whoever designed and made these shutters, the stamped metal parts seem so cheap but can be coaxed back to life. This particular shutter had been exposed to damp at some point for quite some time, and I guess took some knocks (hence the initial loose spring) but it was possible to get it working.

[David Lindquist]

Maybe you've seen this piece by the late Steve Grimes: https://web.archive.org/web/20110820015229/http://www.skgrimes.com/library/used-obsolete-discontinued-shutters/ilex

Reading through it you get a sense of his respect for the Yankee mechanics (using the term broadly), especially the tool and die makers, whose skills made these shutters possible.

Personally I think these shutters get a bad rap. Now the speeds are often not as marked, and the highest speeds, especially with the No. 5 Universal, are, shall we say, aspirational, with the examples I have they are actually quite consistent and reasonably well spaced.

David

[Keith Fleming]

My first thought on this topic was Flutot's Camera Repair. I checked the website and it indicated the shop was moving back in November 2023, and expected to reopen in the spring of 2024. I have the feeling I have missed some earlier discussion of this topic.

Keith

[pjd]

Maybe you've seen this piece by the late Steve Grimes: https://web.archive.org/web/20110820015229/http://www.skgrimes.com/library/used-obsolete-discontinued-shutters/ilex

Reading through it you get a sense of his respect for the Yankee mechanics (using the term broadly), especially the tool and die makers, whose skills made these shutters possible.

Personally I think these shutters get a bad rap. Now the speeds are often not as marked, and the highest speeds, especially with the No. 5 Universal, are, shall we say, aspirational, with the examples I have they are actually quite consistent and reasonably well spaced.

David

Thank you for posting that link, I think I read it years ago and finally understood it after working on that shutter! Some of the contents must have been in the back of my mind while writing.

This quote: "In addition, the stamped metal parts provide no particular sophistication for adjustment depending on the skill and experience of the mechanic to clean, file, bend and tweak to obtain the best performance and then leave well enough alone"..well, I'm at the "leave well enough alone" stage.

Looking at that page, the line "Other Black finished models are virtually the same as the usual, reliable, silvery colored ones" is a little confusing. I'm not quite sure if the shutter I worked on is "bad" or "virtually the same as...".

I agree, I think these shutters aren't bad. I'm fine with any shutter with times that are "wrong", as long as they are consistently wrong. I've not tested the speeds on the shutter I've worked on yet (I'll let it sit a month or so to see if it's still playing ball, but so far so good), but the speeds seem useful, and the slow speed mechanism buzzes along fine.

I could have mentioned, during reassembly a post on a gear in the slow speed mech has to be eased along behind one of the long levers to get slow speeds / for the shutter to work. One of those awkward things I had to figure out, which will make no sense until someone else dives into one of these shutters. The aperture mechanism is quite a thing too.