Dropped a Rolleiflex shutter assembly and a guy talked me through the rebuild

I was working late at my bench in Portland last fall, trying to get a Rolleiflex 3.5E back together. My tweezers slipped and the whole shutter blade stack scattered across the floor. I was about to pack it in when an older guy named Frank called me from the shop next door. He heard me swear through the wall and came over with a magnifier and a few tricks for stacking those blades. Showed me how to use a piece of tape as a hinge guide, saved me from ordering new parts. Has anyone else had a random stranger bail them out of a jam like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

andrew_miller9010h ago

Jumped right into my own story when I read this. I was rebuilding a Pentax 6x7 once and lost a tiny spring that holds the mirror mechanism together. It shot across my garage and I spent an hour on my hands and knees with a flashlight. My neighbor Dave who restores old tractors happened to walk by and saw me losing it. He pulled a magnet on a stick out of his truck and found that spring stuck to a metal shelf bracket in like two minutes. Random people with random skills save the day more than we admit.

paulw6310h ago

Dave didn't save me when I lost a screw from an old Nikon F once. It bounced off my workbench, hit the wall, and I swear it teleported into another dimension. I spent three hours looking for it, tore my whole shop apart, and finally found it in a coffee mug I hadn't used in six months. I still don't know how it got in there. Your neighbor Dave is a hero, mine would have just laughed and handed me a beer while I cried over a camera that cost me less than my time is worth.