I need to get the aperture blades on my gorgeous Auto Chinon 135mm cleaned. Any of you have experience doing this?
Craig, I went through my Varexon 135 mm not too long ago, but I certainly wouldn't call myself an expert, and I don't know that I'd be comfortable doing this with someone else's lens (especially if it's not one I could replace for $10 plus shipping via eBay).
FWIW, in mine, I was able to unscrew the mount collar from the back, take ou the rear lens element (just unscrewed the collar by hand, then the glass dropped out onto my cleaning cloth), then take out a couple screws down inside and remove the aperture assembly for cleaning without further disassembly. Unfortunately, I had to go much further, because I also wanted to correct the infinity focus (even more unfortunately, I still didn't get it quite right, and may have to go back into it if I want to be able to focus to the horizon).
If yours is as simple, you might want to just do it yourself (and you should be able to tell by shining a flashlight into the back with the lens focused as close as possible); you can't screw up the infinity focus if that's all you do, and as long as you keep track of the orienation of any glass you remove, you should find it a LOT easier than that RF repair/alignment you were working on recently.
