Salvaging flood damaged lenses

[Jim C.]

.... Forgive me but I must ask, why did you store photographic equipment in a basement?

Why not ? Some fellow members have darkrooms in the basement, where mine is unfortunately, fortunatly just the base boards got wet,
so I don't see any reason not to store photographic equipment in my basement. My unfortunate circumstance was because
of a blocked drain and a past due manaintenance of a drywell overflowing because of 8" of rain in a hour.

In regards to WD 40 it was the only thing I had on hand that would offer any kind of moisture protection, it was either that or
let them rust, some of my other odd ball lenses are trash I can see rust on the rear element.

[ic-racer]

My only water submersion experience was the day I got my 300mm Fujinon in Copal 3. It fell off the front of my Century 8x10 and landed in a pond. About 3 bubbles come out of the shutter when submerged.

I retrieved the shutter, drove home and immediately took the shutter apart and dried it with a hair drier.
The lens front and rear cells started to show condensation between the elements after I dried the shutter, so I took both front and rear cells apart and dried all the lens elements.
Ten years later the shutter still fires perfectly and there has been no haze of fungus on the inner lens elements. I had touched up the notches where the spanner wrench fit with some black paint, so one would never know this lens was ever totally submerged or taken apart.