A rather specific post title, sufficient to immediately lose the interest of my regular readers, but maybe this is something that might be useful to other Yashica owners so I will offer up the heading to Google in the hope it might be used one day.
This morning saw us at a large pharmacy outlet where I offered the sales assistant my choice for the day, a hemostat and a pair of surgical rubber gloves. A rather unusual combination, and I couldn’t resist indulging in my favourite hobby of embarrassing my wife by announcing, in a loud voice, “all we need now are some restraints, a gag and a butt plug, then we will be all set. I just hope she hasn’t escaped from the cupboard while we are away”. I have no idea why she doesn’t see the funny side of such pronouncements.
Anyway, the reason for my purchases were in fact nothing to do with perversion and everything to do with my lovely, newly-acquired, Yashica 12.
The outside is immaculate, and everything functions as it should, but there is some visible marking on the taking lens, maybe just haze from old age, but also possibly helped by the various fluids that have been squirted onto the shutter to keep it running; Yashica shutters have a tendency to tiredness and need perking up from time to time.
The front lens unscrews easily enough and can be taken out for cleaning or replacement; but the taking lens is actually in two parts and the other sits behind the shutter and is only accessible from inside the bowels of the camera.
I decided to replace the taking lens, which meant replacing both the front and rear elements (they come as a matched pair), which meant I needed a way to get deep inside the camera and rotate the lens by inserting something into the notches on the rim.
By the look of the marks on the rear lens rim, others had been there before me. I wanted to get in and unscrew the lens with minimal further damage to the rim, with no damage to the lens itself, and no marking of the internal body. Obviously I needed a hemostat.
First job was to very carefully grind down the ends of the hemostat such that they fitted into the very small notches on the edge of the rim. Fortunately I had the new lens sitting on the bench so I had something to work with.
Next I put some rubber tubing on the arms of the hemostat to ensure it would not scratch the body. I also pulled the tubing over the notches, so I could push down on the lens and have the head surrounded by protective rubber.
That would have been a workable solution, but I was concerned that when I was using it I would squeeze on the hemostat, reduce or increase the spacing and end up scratching the lens or the body. I needed some way to keep the hemostat at a constant width.
The answer, as with most of my “engineering” solutions, lay in blue plastic plumbing pipe. I cut two slots in the pipe and gradually deepened them until the hemostat was at exactly the right amount of opening. A couple of cable ties made for a solid job.
Not very elegant, but the pipe is also very handy to hold onto when you are using the device; and I can make a separate pipe with different spacing for the front lens should it ever refuse to move with just my fingers.
After an hour or so construction work (including pondering), it was the work of a few minutes to remove the old rear lens and screw in a new one (which is what the rubber glove is for, you need to put the lens in place with your fingers and I didn’t want to get any finger marks on the internals of the body or the lens).
Now I just need to find a photographic use for a butt plug.