Two ways to clean a sticky aperture ring, and I picked the one that cost me a client
Last month I had a Canon AE-1 on the bench with an aperture ring that felt like it was dragging through cold honey. I had two choices. Soak the whole ring assembly in naphtha and hope the old grease flushed out, or pull the ring, scrape every trace of green gunk off the blades, and re-lube with a tiny bit of synthetic. I went with the soak because it was faster and I had three other jobs waiting. Two days later the ring felt fine in my hand at room temp, so I sent it back. The customer called from his car in the parking lot of a Portland Trail Blazers game saying it seized up in the cold. Now I'm out $85 for the return shipping and the relube, and honestly I don't know if the soak method is ever worth it on a camera this old. What do you all do when a ring feels sticky, do you always pull it apart or is there a shortcut that actually holds up in cold weather?