Met a retired repair guy at a local shop who showed me how to fix a stuck shutter curtain with just a toothpick

I was in Portland last Tuesday at this little camera shop off Hawthorne. This old timer walks in, sees me struggling with a Pentax K1000 that had a shutter curtain hanging up. He pulled a toothpick out of his pocket, gently nudged the curtain track, and it snapped right back. Said he learned that trick in the 70s from a guy who fixed cameras for the navy. Has anyone else run into random old school hack like that? I feel like half this trade is just passed down stories.

3 comments

3 Comments

barbara_baker574d ago

That toothpick trick works because most shutter hang-ups are just a tiny bit of dirt or dried lube in the track, so a gentle nudge clears it without damaging anything delicate. The navy angle is interesting though, military repair guys had to fix stuff fast with whatever was on hand (a toothpick is a lot gentler than a screwdriver). Bet there's a whole subculture of old timer hacks hiding in camera shops that nobody writes down.

lunakim4d ago

Read somewhere that the old Leica repair guys had a whole drawer full of toothpicks and bamboo skewers. They swore by them because metal tools leave marks you can't see until you develop the film later.

the_jana3d ago

Wait, they actually kept whole drawers of them? That's wild.