Retaining ring stuck on Horseman board

[Ernest MacMillan]

In my experience, I seem to need two hands to properly hold the wrench and one to hold the work. The illustrated wrench, freely available from Japan and about $30, works better for me than some of the others mentioned.

If you are truly desperate, you may clamp the board to a table using wooden spacers or a wooden ring and clamps to protect the shutter, and use a broad flat screwdriver and a small hammer to tap the ring along (electrician's solution).

For about $100, you can buy a horseman adapter, the older ones from Japan usually work best, and just go with the flow.

[Bernice Loui]

More than the spanner wrench. Yes a good quality spanner wrench can make a real difference for dealing with lens retaining rings. Best of the commonly available spanner wrenches was sold (made?) by Horseman. The spanner wrench arms are forged steel with alloy steel tips that are held into the arms by screws. If this spanner wrench cannot remove retaining ring, the retaining ring is seriously stuck.

Horseman spanner wrench next to the common flat plate spanner wrench that works 90% of the time.



Second and more insidious problem is friction and galling of aluminum threads. Galling or essentially aluminum threads getting "married" to each other is common. The anodizing sort of helps but also can make galling worst due to the unpredictable finish of the anodizing that can behave like
two rough surfaces producing lots of friction together making un-threading extremely difficult. This is where penetrating oil like Liquid wrench and similar can make big differences. Suggest swabbing the stuck threads with penetrating oil via a Q-tip to prevent applying too much penetrating oil and causing an oil slick on the optical parts involved. Allow the penetrating oil to work for hours to days, then try removing with a good quality spanner wrench.

Heat can work, problem being these precision and delicate optical bits are often heat sensitive.


Bernice