richard_k2

Thanks. I found that a small amount of acetone on a chunk of melamine foam did a good job removing the old adhesive. Pulled it all off as a single layer of goo. I tried the Loctite product (sparingly!) and got decent results. I also tried a thinned out PVA glue and got better results. I have a tube of hypo cement for optical purposes I got from Amazon, and while I like the needle dispenser, I think the stuff’s too thick still. In any case, I still have a clamping problem in that I am sure the bond layer is much thicker than it should be because I haven’t figured out how to apply pressure while whatever I use sets. This became more obvious to me as I just got a second supposedly non-working Medalist in the mail today. The split view has a dividing line so much finer than my first Medalist that I’m now assuming the first one was already reglued at some point. as an aside, it was your YouTube video on how to disassemble the shutter on this camera that inspired me to pick one up in the first place. So thanks so much for that. Given that both of these cameras were sold as non-working, I figured they’d be good learning projects. Now that I realize that they are both cosmetically good as well as functional, I’m going to ship them off for a ‘real’ CLA rather than potentially booger them up myself.

Thanks for the info. I don’t have a photo handy. The issue is with the two stacked coincidence prisms, essentially two right triangles, one atop the other. The top prism is bonded to the lower prism with some sort of optical cement. From chatting with Dan Daniel, I’m using a Loctite glass glue product, although I have a more specific optical cement on order. So far, the fix has worked, although the Loctite product is thicker than whatever magic goo Kodak used back in the day, meaning that the dividing line is thicker than it used to be. I think I could improve in my first result if I could find some way to clamp the two prisms together while the glue sets, but these are damnably tiny parts and I have not yet found a solution for keeping the prisms aligned while squeezing them together. edit: I found a picture, but it’s of the bottom prism only, this was taken after the top prism fell off. Double edit: I circled the wrong version of the prism in the model diagram above. I should have circled part 94048

I recently picked up a Medalist II in cosmetically good shape in hopes that it worked. The seller didn’t know how to check operation so I took a gamble. As it turns out, it works quite well. Or I should say, it worked well for a while. Somewhere into the second roll, the upper half of the rangefinder split image disappeared. I went home and (gently) pulled off the finder cover assembly to take a look. The problem was immediately obvious. The topmost of the pair of coincidence prisms came loose. I looked at the repair manual for clues as to how to refit it back into position, and basically find that back in the day, the coincidence prisms were ordered as a complete assembly with the erecting prism. So on a scale from 1 to oh crap, just how bad off am I? Is there a way to reattach that loose prism?