Drepy folding shutter : lazy shutter and putting the *#~#$* thing together

Laurent

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I know I have too many projects in parallel, thanks to my ADHD. This one took close to one year, simply because I could not get the energy to concentrate on it for a sufficient time.

This week I decided I'd work on the Drepy camera ( 6x9cm folder, made in the 1950's in France) so that I could shoot it again.

The issue was a lazy shutter, which needed to be exercised each time it was left untouched for a few days. Opening the shutter was the easy part, as it unscrews from the front standard using a spanner wrench, and the mechanism can the be extracted by
- removing the closing plate (the black ring around the lens) by turning it counter clockwise by about 40°
- removing the speed setting cam by pulling it.
- unscrewing the three little screws at the back of the shutter.


On the image below, the lens is removed and the closing plate has been rotated. You can see three little tabs that will hold it in place after it is rotated.





One issue is that when you do this, 4 little springs will get partially loose as they are pushing against the shutter casing...

To access the shutter, one has to remove the winding lever/cam, for which I'm not sure of the proper way. I found it very hard to put it back later, as there is a piece that couples with the self-timer.

Here is a view of the shutter with the speed ring removed. The winding lever/cam is the inner "ring" (it has some tabs extending to the bottom of the shutter, which activate/lock some other parts).



With the speed ring, and without the center plate (the shutter is set to a speed, not sure which one, the "T" and "B" positions).



The main lesson for me will be that even a "simple" shutter is a complex mechanism (the Kodak Brownie Hawkeye is much simpler) and can be frustrating thing to interact with... Operating the Drepy shutter outside of its casing is very hard, save for the "T" setting (and if you've found what little lever will block the trigger lever when you want to close the shutter)

My shutter now seems to operate smoothly (I'll give it a few days rest), but I had to remove the flash sync contact as it was interfering with the blades "return" lever.
I will also have to find a way to block the self-timer as it jams the shutter. I think the issue lies in the way I put the winding lever/cam, but apart from removing the whole self-timer mechanism I did not see what I could do. And since the self-timer does not seem to be a self contained assembly I did not want to take the risk.

If you read me till this point, here's a treat: a view of the camera after a good cleanup...

 
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I opened a few shutters like this, as they also were slow or sticky, but never ran into problems like this. It were shutters of other makers. On your picture i find it hard to recognize any springs, are these black leaf-springs?

The only idea coming to my mind is that i had a very old shutter to which a flash contact had been added later. The camera still was from a time when no electrical flash lights were around or standart, but the shutter once had been upgraded to electrical flash.
Maybe the same has been done here, which could explain some problems you had (not the springs, but maybe that the shutter got lazy as some of the mechanism might have been dragging on the flash contact element inside) .
 
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Laurent

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The springs are barely visible here as they are tiny torsion springs made of steel "thread" (don't know the english term) and are somewhat deep into the mechanism. In the image, one can be guessed, it is the clear/silver line at the end of the second green arrow. I don't think I have pictures of the disassembled shutter.

I don't think so, the contact seems well integrated, and one of the levers (the one opening the blades at the end of exposure) pushes on it in a way that seems normal. also it is integrated in a recess that was machined at the same time as the rest of the shutter's main body.
Nice camera, never heard of that type of shutter before.
What's the lens?
It's a triplet I think, Drestyl is the model name (made by the camera maker, they seem to have manufactured everything themselves). 10.5 cm / 4.5 lens
 
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I see.
 
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