Dropped a shutter curtain spring into a vacuum cleaner mid-repair

I was working on a Pentax K1000 at my shop bench when a spring flew off and landed right in the intake of the shop vac I had running nearby. Had to dismantle the vacuum filter housing for 20 minutes just to fish it out, and the spring still ended up bent - has anyone else lost a tiny part to a random shop appliance before?

3 comments

3 Comments

burns.jenny19d ago

3 times I've lost springs from old Ricohs into floor vents or trash piles. That shop vac story is brutal though, I feel your pain. Having to take apart the whole vacuum just for a tiny bendy piece of metal is exactly the kind of repair nightmare that makes you want to scream. At least with carpet you can sometimes find it by feel, but the vacuum just swallows things forever. Hope the K1000 still ended up working okay after you bent that spring back.

ericj4519d ago

@eric_knight7 knows that feeling too well, those tiny springs just vanish into thin air.

eric_knight719d ago

The worst part is when you finally get the vacuum apart and the spring just pings off into another dimension. Had that happen with a shutter spring from a Minolta once, spent an hour crawling around the garage floor with a flashlight. K1000 ended up working fine, but I still think about that spring sometimes.