I have a vintage Toyo 4x5 that I bought in an estate sale.
The camera will take hours to properly clean but before I finish I was curious to know what lubricants do you use for your controls.
I have a vintage Toyo 4x5 that I bought in an estate sale.
The camera will take hours to properly clean but before I finish I was curious to know what lubricants do you use for your controls.
On metal to metal parts, I use Lubriplate 630 as per Ken Hough's recommendations
http://deardorffcameras.0catch.com/Care.htm
I'll add from personal experience, don't use Butcher's Wax to protect the wood!
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White
John, this is a lithium based grease that would work well in the mechanisms of a view camera, at the end this is a very light duty and a lithium grease may be used even in heavy industrial duties. Anyway today we have modern lubricants that are better in all aspects, in particular dry-film lubricants based in Teflon, like "DuPont™ Non-Stick Dry-Film Lubricant with Teflon® Fluoropolymer". http://www.performancelubricantsusa....-lubricant.phpOriginally Posted by John Kasaian
In particular "Thin coating is excellent for tight tolerances and sliding tracks"
This ensures very enhanced penetration, ultra long persistence, persistent smoothness, expulsion of dirt and almost total protection aganist water. A lot of times this allows a perfect job without disassembling the mechanism to be cleaned.
While I use lithium grease for some applications in industrial machinery I always use dry-film teflon for precision mechanisms that are exposed to air (not confined, as gearboxes are), with awesome results.
Avoid lubricating shutters unless you really know what you are doing. They usually work well when clean and dry, although carefully lubricating the right spots extends shutter life.
Does anyone have any experience using silicon or graphite spray lubricants for the camera movements or rail?
Never, ever use graphite! It is like a nano contaminant and if it finds its way to your lens, and it will, it can ruin it forever. I dunno about silicone, but in my modest 40 years of experience, the best lubricant is NO lubricant. Just keep the rails clean. When they are stuck, find out why. Unless your camera is a POS, clean is all you need.
This is a vague question, as there is no "one size fits all" answer...
Like a car, there are different lubes for different applications, and no one thing for all...
My repair/restoration shop has many different lubes, polishes, chems, finishes, protectants, etc and you should have the wisdom to use the proper one when (or if) needed (or sometimes not at all)...
It seems the American way now that one "miracle" product will replace everything else with "no fuss or muss"...
Nothing like the rubber stamp approval of "as seen on TV"...
Steve K
For Linhof where there is brass on aluminum Marflex thourghly cleaned the parts and then used an extremely thin layer of pure petroleum jelly,
Dry Graphite is death for precision mechanical items due to the abrasive nature of Graphite. Graphite is hard, gets stuck in the pores of metal surfaces where they stay and slowly grind away at the moving parts. There was a time when powdered Graphite was used in locks.. with disastrous results.
Lithium grease dries out over time resulting in sticking clay mixed with dirt will grind away at precision mechanisms as they move. Lithium is used as a thickener for the base oil.
Petroleum Jelly also dries out and becomes clay with time.
Silicon based lubricants might be OK, but if any of that ends up where it should never be, removal can be a serious problem.
For moving part that is not made of aluminum Dupont Krytox 205 GPL works. It is PTFE based, originally designed to endure space flight conditions of very low vacuum, not react with other materials and not dry out easily.
For aluminum parts consider a synthetic base, non-lithium thickener moly grease with a low NGLI rating when low viscosity is needed.
Parts and mechanisms that require the lower viscosity of oil, use synthetic micrometer-instrument-watch oil.
Bernice
Hmmm, I don't think it was a vague question (labrat)
I just asked what people used to lubricate their camera. Perhaps I could have been more specific about the camera (cast aluminum parts),
Also, since I'm in Japan some items are either difficult to find or need to be imported.
I was just keeping my options open to what is viable for me. But thank you for your comment.
I did read about issues with using spray (dry) graphite and potential lens contamination. Thank you for the advice Jac
Thank you Bernice! I'll read up a little more and see what i'll use to smooth out the camera movements.
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