Took me 5 years to realize I was cleaning shutters wrong

I always wiped aperture blades from the outside in, then a customer's old Pentax showed up with oil streaks I couldn't shift. Turns out you have to work from the hub outward, and since I switched, I haven't had to send a single lens out for a second pass. Anyone else make that mistake or was it just me?

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1 Comment

clark.alex15h ago

...and here I was thinking I was some kind of cleaning genius because I never scratched a blade, turns out I was just polishing my own bad habits for years. I used to go at them like I was wiping a counter, just back and forth from the edge, and every now and then I'd get this weird smearing that I blamed on cheap oil. One time I even soaked a blade in lighter fluid and left it out to dry, which is a great way to feel real smart when you smell your whole shop up for a week. The hub outward thing sounds so obvious now that you say it, like why would you push gunk INTO the center where it collects, but my brain just never made that jump. I'm honestly surprised I haven't sent a customer's lens to you by accident at this point, so thanks for posting this before I ruined something expensive.