Retina IIa Frame Counter Spring Repair

After a few years of good service, the frame counter spring in my Kodak Retina IIa (type 016) died. Disassembly of the winding lever showed that the small spring steel arm of the part broke off at its transition point where it bends to engage the frame counter ratchet.

Not wanting to seek out a parts camera and hope the frame counter spring was good, I opted to try repairing the existing part.

Here's the piece of the spring that broke off alongside my source of material for fabricating a repair. The dull coping saw blade is made of spring steel. I filed the teeth off and reduced the thickness to 0.008" to match the original.



A small length was cut off and bent at about 45 degrees. I then soldered this to the inside of the remaining projection on the frame counter spring.






This ended up working quite well. I even eyeballed the dimensions close enough that I didn't have to do any filing of the finished part to get the finger to engage the ratchet properly. When reassembled it worked as good as a factory new part. I figured I'd post this here as this is a known issue with the Retina IIa, and this gives another option versus finding a replacement.

Thanks for posting this repair tip.
How did you reduce the thickness of the coping saw blade? By grinding it down with a Dremel?

In order to prevent this counter spring from breaking (again), another modification I suggest is to flatten the round spring-washer that's in the stack of counter-parts. Their function is to stiffen the counter-wheel enough so it won't turn backward. But it's too stiff, causing that spring to break. Flattening the spring-washer reduces this friction.

Just a few swipes with a diamond file to thin it out, the blade was only 0.0012" to begin with, so only a few thousandths. I would avoid using a dremel unless you have the work piece clamped between the jaws of a vise or pliers to act as a heat sink, as the dremel could heat the part enough to remove the temper on it.

That's a good tip for the spring washer though.

Hunter_Compton said:

A small length was cut off and bent at about 45 degrees. I then soldered this to the inside of the remaining projection on the frame counter spring.

Click to expand...

Very nice repair! Did you use silver solder?

No just normal 60/40 tin/lead solder and a pencil soldering iron. I would be concerned about heating the part enough to remove the temper of the steel if you used silver solder.

A while back I purchased an old stock of camera parts from a repair shop. One of the boxes contained lots retina parts. To bad i didnt see this sooner