Arca Swiss Reflex Shutter re-assembly

[horsemilk]

Slim chance, I know, as this camera is rare as hens teeth. But I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with the service or assembly of the focal plane shutter on the Arca Swiss Reflex. I picked up one with a faulty shutter, which turned out to be just one of the shutter curtain rolls being seized. Getting at it necessitated disassembling most of the camera however, and I can't seem to put the shutter speed mechanism back together correctly.

This is a bit more complex than the Graflex focal plane shutters I have some experience with. It's a two curtain shutter for one. Before Disassembly it looked like this:

And with the components stripped, you see the basics of the shutter here. The upper fitting is where the winding lever goes, which is supposed to wind the lower black cogs (two the same size, stacked over each other,) which in turn wind the shutter curtains - the two silver cogs at the very bottom.

And now here is the blasted thing I can't piece together correctly. The pin in this mechanism goes into one of the holes in the black cogs, each corresponding to a shutter speed. The silver collar with slots then goes over this mechanism, with each slot locking into a shutter speed on the housing. The way it's supposed to function is that when assembled, you pull out this piece, rotate it to the desired shutter speed, and it slots in. This all seems straight forward enough, but there must be some specific order or configuration this is supposed to be assembled in, because I can't get it right.

I've done it dozens of times, trying to get the pin into various different shutter speeds.

As far as I can guess, this brass ring cog is supposed to be in this position, so that the groove along it can catch the tab corresponding on the black cog. There is a marking on the opposite side that corresponds to this position, suggesting that this was necessary to aid in factory assembly. So I think I have this in the right place.

So here it is, assembled to the best of my ability.

Unfortunately it just doesn't work. The best I've done is to get most of the shutter speeds working, except for 1/25th (which is an essential one for me). Also the thin metal disc that goes over the top indicating shutter speeds doesn't match up correctly in this configuration. Running the shutter at 1/25th produces this result:

https://imgur.com/3euZvtA

I'm praying that out there somewhere is someone who's experienced with this mechanism, and can tell me the correct way to put things together. If you have any clue, your help would be so appreciated because I am at my wits end :/

 

[EdSawyer]

I have one. I've disassembled and serviced it. It's back together now but I have pics here: http://edsawyer.com/lens/arca_reflex/ It is a finicky mechanism, to be sure. The curtains take a sharp bend around the rollers which makes everything more critical to get it to run at full speed vs. say a Graflex with the wider rollers.

Looking at the video, are the curtains positioned in the right place? It seems like the 2nd curtain is not running all the way up? Hard to tell for sure.

Feel free to be in touch. I will try to look over the pics I have to find any details that might help. There are not too many of these out there, as you have found. ;-)

 

[EdSawyer]

Sorry, in looking through those pics none of them show the shutter disassembled. I do have some pics of it though, I will dig around and find them and post to see if that can help.

 

[horsemilk]

Looking at the video, are the curtains positioned in the right place? It seems like the 2nd curtain is not running all the way up? Hard to tell for sure.

I believe the curtains are in the right place, as when this mechanism is removed they naturally return to their closed position, the 2nd curtain goes all the way up. I believe my problem is in the re-assembly of this mechanism. Thanks for your help, and at least I'm glad to have found another owner. Any idea how many of these there are out there?

 

[EdSawyer]

This might help... it refers to the version with electronic slow-shutter speeds but the part we care about is the same (the mechanical parts).

 

[EdSawyer]

Very few 4x5 versions out there. I have seen maybe 2 or 3 sell on ebay since I got mine. There's maybe 2 or 3 others in the wild that I know about. There was a non-shutter version that had just a 1/25 speed using the mirror as shutter. I've seen a couple of those, but they are far less useful than the dual-curtain model.

 

[horsemilk]

Thank you for that Ed! It doesn't tell me exactly what I need to know, but it seems if I can get in contact with this John Emmett fellow he would be the man for the job. Do you perhaps have a phone number for him?

On a side note, it seems you've mounted an Aero Ektar on yours. May I ask what the furthest focal distance you get while clearing the mirror?

 

[EdSawyer]

I uploaded some more images to the folder so there's more in there now showing internals. I don't have a shot handy of that geartrain/knob taken apart, though I did have it off at one point when I was giving it all a CLA.

 

[EdSawyer]

I checked with Emmett a few years ago, he doesn't work on these anymore, nor does the other contact I found that had in the past, sadly. :-/ Which is why I tackled it myself.

for the AE, I can get focus out to about 10ft or more with it, it makes for a nice half-length or head-and-shoulders portrait lens. The Pentac will go to infinity though.

 

[horsemilk]

Thanks again Ed. Yours definitely has more modern internals from mine, it looks much cleaner. And the screws are phillips head rather than slotted. One last question - you seem to have converted the back to a Graflex graflok type, can I ask why?

 

[EdSawyer]

After looking at this a while I think it's your orientation of the slotted silver collar, and the piece with the pin, that is out of sync somehow. The 3 closest holes in the black outer cog are the 3 fastest shutter speeds. The way this works is when the shutter is cocked, both those black cogs are wound up and held using the tabs on them by the arm on the right. Firing the shutter releases the outer cog (first blind). The pin serves to couple the 2 blinds at different intervals, firing the 2nd one at a certain delay after the first one. Depending on which hole the pin is in, determines the delay. The slots/collar need to agree with the pin location. Other than that it looks pretty much correct.

 

[EdSawyer]

Well, I spent a little time cleaning it up (a few months actually of fiddling with it). I still have issues with it sometimes in cold weather, not wanting to run at fast speeds until firing the shutter several times. There's probably some cleaning/lubing on something that maybe I missed, hard to guess without tearing it down again.

I use Grafmatics a lot and wanted to be able to use them (and polaroid backs) on this camera. Grafmatics barely fit in the spring back - it's super tight. Polaroid backs don't really fit at all. So, I fabbed up a graflok back using a magnesium graflok back from a speed/crown, and an aluminum plate. the register distance is the same so it's interchangeable with the spring back without any focus difference. The Graflex graflok back is the thinnest graflok back I have ever found and was really the only/best choice for this task.