Dropped a Rolleiflex at a flea market in Portland and it taught me to check every screw first.

Was just walking around with it around my neck and the lens board just fell off mid-step because the previous owner had stripped all the little brass screws and I didn't catch it, anyone else had a camera fall apart on them from a bad previous repair?

2 comments

2 Comments

jason_fisher416d ago

Ask @brooke533 if they ever found a decent source for replacement screws that actually match the original thread pitch. I had a similar thing with an old Agfa folder where someone had jammed a standard UNC screw into a fine thread hole and it was held in by nothing but brass shavings and hope. The real kicker was when I tried to take it out and it snapped clean off flush with the body plate. Had to drill out the whole thing and tap it to a modern size just to get the back to close again.

brooke53316d ago

The thing that gets me is how many people don't realize those old Rolleiflex screws are often a weird metric/imperial hybrid from the 1950s. I had a similar thing happen with a Mamiya C220 where the previous owner used random hardware store screws that were just slightly too long and they cracked the internal focusing helix. 4 out of 6 screws were original and the other 2 were holding things together by pure luck. A lot of these repair jobs from back in the day were done by guys who just grabbed whatever was in their jar and called it good. Always worth pulling a screw or two and checking the thread pitch with a cheap gauge before you trust it.