Heat gun trick fixed a sticky aperture blade on my Canon AE-1

I had a Canon AE-1 that was stuck at f/5.6 for weeks, and every solvent I tried just made the oil spread worse. After reading a forum post, I used a cheap heat gun set to low and gently warmed the blade assembly for about 30 seconds, which finally freed it up. Has anyone else used heat instead of chemicals for oily aperture blades?

2 comments

2 Comments

caseyfox26d ago

Jokes on me, I probably melted mine but it still worked.

seth_allen27d ago

Hell yeah, same trick saved my Minolta X-700 a couple months back. That heat gun method is way better than messing with solvents that just gunks everything up worse.