That moment when a shutter curtain just went limp on me

I was working on a beat-up old Pentax spotmatic in my shop last Tuesday, and the second curtain just sagged right as I was trying to tension it. Had to rethread the whole thing from scratch, took me about two hours of cursing under my desk lamp. Anybody else hit a point where you just have to walk away and come back the next day?

2 comments

2 Comments

butler.mark12d ago

Yeah that bit about "sagged right as I was trying to tension it" hit me hard. I wonder if sometimes it's not just bad luck but maybe the old grease or oil on the curtain tracks getting sticky from sitting around too long. On a spotmatic like that, the curtain can grab weird if the lubricant gets gummy over the decades. Might be worth cleaning the rails with a little lighter fluid before you try tensioning again, just to rule that out.

patel.daniel12d ago

Nah, I gotta disagree with @butler.mark, I think that's a stretch.