*solved* Cleaning inside of watameter I

Anyone have any experience cleaning the inside of a watameter I? I found one for about as cheap as I'm going to find on fleabay, and it's in ok shape but I see a little grime on the inner mirror. I can use it without cleaning, but it's too nice looking on the outside to leave it this way. I'm assuming the two screws on the front take the front cover off. If I leave it face up, should everything stay put so I can clean with a cotton swab? *edit* Ok after now reading up on rangefinders (first one I've owned), I'm not supposed to touch the half-silvered mirror with ANYTHING, is this correct? What about the yellow plastic?

If there's dust on the mirror I use a bird(duck?) feather cleaned in alcohol and dried. I keep a couple in a plastic bag
just for that.The hard part is getting the bird to cooperate.


BTW Geese are cranky when you try to get them in the bag.

John Koehrer said:

If there's dust on the mirror I use a bird(duck?) feather cleaned in alcohol and dried. I keep a couple in a plastic bag
just for that.The hard part is getting the bird to cooperate.


BTW Geese are cranky when you try to get them in the bag.

Click to expand...

The mirror that reflects the image over to the half silvered mirror wouldn't come clean even with a qtip and and alcohol. I didn't do any damage, but it looks just as oxidized around the sides as when I started. I of course didn't touch the half silvered part, but it is incredibly hard to reach anyway. I wiped the back of the yellow part with a microfiber and cleaned the inside if the lenses. the hardest part was cleaning the little viewfinder! I had to wrap an kimtex wipe around a bent paperclip to get far enough down in there to wipe off all the grime. It did brighten up a tad, I figure that's the best I'm going to do and it probably wasn't much brighter than that new. I'm certainly not dropping $60-80 for a "mint" one. Are the voigtlander ones any better or am I just paying for a name? I can't imagine a more simple to adjust and open one than the watameter I.

I still have nightmares about a goose that chased me at a junkyard once....