A quick update!: I purchased some pure ammonia and doused the entire shutter release assembly with it a few times and gave it a good half hour to set each time, and even with all the tools I had recently received from Amazon at my disposal, I still couldn't get the damn thing to open! After staring at the GW690III service manual, I hatched a plan to disassemble the camera from the bottom up to get to the rangefinder glass. So, that said, I unscrewed off the bottom plate as well as the plastic piece directly under the front viewfinder, which was a bit tricky as I had to remove the little straight vertical rubber grip to get to the screws. Anyway, I managed to get that plastic part under the viewfinder off. I unscrewed all the screws for the entire top plastic assembly, and while the film advance lever wouldn't let me move said top plastic assembly much, it still gave me
just enough wiggle room to get to the front part of the viewfinder (and rear part of the clear plastic in front of the viewfinder of the top front plastic assembly). And
Voilà! I managed to insert a rubbing alcohol-doused q-tip that I had 'thinned out' with the clean new pliers I had bought and subsequently gently started cleaning both the inside part of top plastic assembly clear plastic and the front part of the internal viewfinder. I did it all carefully with extreme caution, but at least managed to get that front part extremely clean, to a point where it looks spotless.
Nonetheless, the actual
inside of the rangefinder is now the challenge since there's still a bit of residual fog, specifically on the lens nearest to your eye when you unscrew the rear diopter. (It's the side of the lens that's facing inward, of course, with the fog that I can't get to). Since I've now basically given up on ever removing the shutter release assembly, I'm not sure how to clean this. Any thoughts? (I've attached a photo so you can see what I mean.)
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