Good morning, Dai;
From your description, it may be that we have a few things in common, but you are ahead of me in experience in working on cameras. I can test them with the equipment here, but opening them and making them perform according the the numbers found in the books is not yet something that I can claim to do. However, as you may have noticed, this does seem to be a trait that will be developed soon. There are enough old cameras around here to make just keeping up with them for a scheduled CLA could have a financial benefit. It will take me 8 to 10 years having one done per month to just go through the cameras for a CLA.
It looks like Tomosoy's books will be coming to the house soon, along with a few other specialized tools for getting into my cameras. Just having the proper screwdrivers for going through the fasteners on my lenses has helped to keep them feeling like they are still in good shape and enjoyable to use.
One of the other external things done just recently on a lens was a problem with the proper connection of the NIKKOR aperture coupling lug with the mating metering pin of a Nikon DP-1 light metering pentaprism on an older Nikon F2 camera. Just sliding a "wedge" between the two "ears" to widen the space between them allowed the metering pin to go between them and enabled the DP-1 to follow what lens aperture I had set. A small success today. That "wedge?" A plain flat screwdriver blade. It worked, but I did remove the aperture coupling lug before widening the space, and then I put it back onto the lens.
Enjoy;
Ralph
Latte Land, Washington
