One thing that commonly find with the many cameras that I have worked on is the shutter … the leaf shutter.
The leaf shutter that we see today first appeared in 1890, created by Voigtlander. It had four blades. Bausch & Lomb also produced many leaf shutters just after this.
Steinheil, was an optical company that got into the shutter business. Christian Bruns, in 1899, made their first 4 bladed leaf shutter.
Friedrick Deckel and Bruns got together (after leaving Steinheil) and created the Compound shutter in 1905 … the speeds where pneumatically controlled.
1910 Bruns created a mechanical retard mechanism to control the shutter speeds, and this became the Compur shutter.
When you see references to a Compur # something shutter … it refers to it’s physical size … leaf shutters were made in different sizes.
Another name in shutters was Gauthier … created by Alfred Gauthier in 1902. They are known for their many shutters, including the well known Prontor shutter.
Now the Japanese came much later to market their own leaf shutters based on both the Compur or Prontor design … in 1935 Seikosha shutters appeared and later on in 1946 the Copal shutter.
Other names in the shutter business … Wollensak and Ilex, both American companies.
First remove the front lens element cell off … umm, I don’t remember if I had to remove both viewing and taking lens, but I do remember the taking lens front cell had to be removed to give room for the front cover to come off.
Since the shutter was jammed I took the covers and speed cam off of the shutter and took a look. The shutter would cock, and the release released … but not much happened. I cleaned up some gummy stuff and put some Ronsonal on the shutter blades. This helped a bit, sometimes the shutter would release but most of the time not. Hmm, confusion … so I searched the web.
There appears to be a problem that plagues certain Yashica TLR’s … the shutter jam (and not the blueberry kind). In researching the disassembly/repair of the Yashica-44 I came across a number of forum posts concerning shutter jams. In most cases there is a warning from others about forcing the self timer lever if the camera is set for M Sync, or if the shutter is gummed up.
I took a really close look around the self timer mechanism and discovered … wait for it … still wait … a bent arm. A shutter release arm/lever moves down when the shutter is released, and normally fits into an open slot of the self timer arm. If the self timer is engaged the shutter release arm/lever will will stop at the self timer arm until the slot turns around to the correct position … thus letting the shutter completely release. I am guessing the shutter arm/lever (whatever you want to call it) was bent by the action of someone forcing the self timer lever while the shutter mechanism was partially engaged (possibly due to gummed up shutter blades).
This Old Camera 