Agfa frozen focus syndrome - a tip for the impatient

I'm sure some of you have run across this on an old Agfa/Ansco folder, - the grease has locked your focus up solid.

I've had this happen on two different shutter/lens assemblies and have tried various things I've seen recommended. After about a month of soaking in denatured alcohol I was able to get the front element out of the first shutter.

I didn't want to wait that long this time around. It seems that heat and soaking in a solvent of some type are the most common recommendations. Something new I saw today was putting the lens/assembly face down on top of a large rubber eraser or stopper, then turn the shutter assembly counter clockwise while applying force down on the stopper. The idea being that the rubber will safely grip the front element.

This surprisingly worked, but it spun out the whole lens group. It didn't do anything about the grease.

Some people have had luck using a combination of soaking and heat by putting the soaking element in sunlight. I took it a step further. I started soaking the front group in denatured alcohol inside a small stainless steel developing tank. In the meantime I filled a pot with hot water so it would be about a 1 cm below the top of the developing tank.

Then I put the tank in the pot with a cover (on the developing tank, not the pot). I heated the water on the stove top, not to boiling but plenty warm. I checked on it every 15 minutes or so. After the first 15 minutes I could see the grease start to leach out. After maybe an hour and a half, I was able to spin the group apart, - Yay !

Tom, you're a gentleman and s scholar. I have had in possession for the past 15 years an old Billy Record II that someone in the past installed a 4.5 Solinar mated to a Synchro Compur shutter. Needless to say the front element has been firmly cemented within the helical of the middle element for all the years that I've owned it.

I have tried soaking the focusing group in Rosinol and nothing. I tried your method with isopropanol inside a baby food jar. Set the electric stove set to the lowest setting. After two hours, I removed the two elements from the alcohol and they separated instantlyby just using my fingers to loosen them.

Tom, you're a gentleman and s scholar. I have had in possession for the past 15 years an old Billy Record II that someone in the past installed a 4.5 Solinar mated to a Synchro Compur shutter. Needless to say the front element has been firmly cemented within the helical of the middle element for all the years that I've owned it.

 

I have tried soaking the focusing group in Rosinol and nothing. I tried your method with isopropanol inside a baby food jar. Set the electric stove set to the lowest setting. After two hours, I removed the two elements from the alcohol and they separated instantlyby just using my fingers to loosen them.

Great! Made my day to know it helped.

It was hard to know if the technique worked because the elements were almost free from the 5 things I had tried before or if it actually did the job on it's own. ;)

After about a month of soaking in denatured alcohol....

Alcohol is a poor solvent of mineral grease. I'm sure a tiny squirt of penetrating oil or lighter fluid or white-spirit would pretty rapidly dissolve hardened grease. Together with brute force applied with a pair of grips and some packing material around the jaws.

Just for reference, I did an all day soak in naptha, a.k.a Rosinol lighter fluid and the inner and front elements were still firmly adhered to each other.

My guess, is when heated to below 100° C for couple of hours in an alcohol vessel, with a water bath, it is the long duration heating of the two metal surfaces over time that did the trick. When I said it finger loosened after the 2 hour soak, I do mean with just two fingers of each hand. It was that easy. No clamping tools or brute force were needed.

Last but not least, my main concern in regards with heating the water bath for the alcohol jar, even at the electric stove's lowest setting, was the possibility to create an alcohol camp stove with the roughly 50mL of isopropanol - should it combust.

I definitely would not use this technique with naptha - unless it could be done outside on a concrete surface using a low temp. warming pad as a heat source.

Maybe just touching the brass surface with a soldering iron for a minute would do the job then.

I had an Agfa shutter with front-cell focussing lens frozen onto it. Brute force eventually shifted it, but I didn't want the crappy lens, only the shutter.

Maybe just touching the brass surface with a soldering iron for a minute would do the job then.

 

I had an Agfa shutter with front-cell focussing lens frozen onto it. Brute force eventually shifted it, but I didn't want the crappy lens, only the shutter.

Maybe. Tried a heat gun, which I know has worked for some, but it wouldn't budge. And there's no guarantee that soaking it in hot solvent will work the next time around. Just another thing to try.