Nikon 35mm F2 Lens Reassembly
Transcript
Hello everyone, this is Jim from International Camera Techs, and we are going to go ahead and put this lens back together. If you’ve watched my previous videos, I took this lens apart and showed you some of my markings. Now we’re going to put it back together and get it all working and someone’s going to have a nice lens.
So this is the 35 millimeter, it’s a Nikkor F2 and there’s not really much to it. We’re just going to grease it up, we’re going to line up all the marks, and we’re going to get his lens going.
Grease heliocoids
So my first thing to do is to go ahead and get these helicoids all greased now [that] I’ve cleaned them all up. I mean you don’t need to see that; it’s kind of boring. What I tend to do is just get a little bit [of grease] on my Q-tip, and I try to paint the helicoid threads with the grease. I try to actually push it down into the threads. That way it’s getting all the way to the bottom. You don’t have your grease just sitting on the top ready to be pushed out the other end.
So it goes pretty quick and it [doesn’t] take too much.
Putting it together
These wear marks are important. I add my little “V” mark and that is now meeting my little “V” mark. right there. There’s my plus. When I took it apart, I told you really this one’s not all that important. There’s only, I think, one starting point anyways. But when you have multiple, it can be important, and honestly, it just saves time. I don’t have to search for where it’s supposed to go in. I automatically know where it goes in. I just run it back and forth with the grease; it’ll spread by itself.
I got my two Vs all lined up. Hope you can see that my depth is correct and so I know and this is in the right spot. I am putting lube in here. I’m not putting too much lube. Too much lube can be just as bad as not having enough. So put my lube in there, get a nice little coating and then this guy here is going to need a little bit of a coating too. It’s not a very big helicoid, but this is going to go together quick and easy and just be in one piece and no time.
Alright, so once again I have my two marks there’s my V’s and there is my plus so I just mark line my plus I heard it click which I know everything just fell in boom, no guesswork. I don’t have to measure any heights. I know all my heights, boom, it’s all set. I’m ready to put in my keys, my helicoids, in one placeV,
Keys
Now on the keys I like to put in a heavier grease. My grease of choice is this molly grease and what I tend to do is on my molly grease is take a Q-tip and I break it because this is thick enough where it’ll start pulling the hairs off the Q-tip so I put a little in there. I know it looks like a big blob but I didn’t leave a whole lot still. Along my Q-tip, the same thing with this one is molly grease. I got it from Nikon at one time but you can get some really good molly grease from NYE which is N. Y. E. They have a very nice molly instrument grease. I’ve been using that and it is working, and has been working extremely well.
Put my key in go ahead start tightening one side down it feels just really nice now, there’s that dry grabby loose tight feel. Let’s get a nice even feel to it.
Okay, so once I get two, I just kind of snug them both up. You don’t want to tighten one down, tighten one down, the other one may not be in exactly straight. But they both are in there and they both feel nice. They’re snug, right now, just go ahead and tighten them down. You can see I’m not tightening them too tight, you really don’t have to.
Alright, so that’s all set, so I get my marks, easily and simply know where this is gonna go.
Focus
The focus stop is gonna hit here so we know that’s gonna be my focus ring and I remember it came out from the front so I put it in march with the dots and put your screws in; three little conical head screws.
There’s one. These are very light I just snug them, don’t tighten this stuff real tight. You’ll just break things, strip things out and a strip screw doesn’t do you any good whatsoever. Ok, so that’s all in. Now, just to cover everything up. I’m going to go ahead and put it in my focus ring so that’s going to sit in here and it hits the stop. The stop has a big key inside here. It comes over and just smacks it, this ring goes in. I’m not worried about focus right now. It is not an issue as soon as I get ready to put the front element in, my rear sections all put together then I’ll go ahead and start worrying about focus. Go ahead, put the screw in, didn’t tighten it, put that one in and didn’t tighten it. Last one, there we go. Nice. So I get one tight, two loose. You’re gonna have to adjust it, gonna have to move it.
F-stop ring
Alright so now we have to put the next step, which is to get the F-stop ring on.
You take this guy out, a stop ring. Use a little bit of a lube on it. Ok, the rub part is not down here that is where the click spring goes so click spring does need a little more grease. So I like to put a little of this molly grease, a little bit thicker right where the click stop would go and that’s right here where you see a little wear and tear. So let’s get some nice grease on that, the rest of the ring can use a nice light coating of grease. It just sits on this little rim right here, where I’m putting it. Don’t have to swap it all around, it doesn’t have to go down here or anything. It’s just excess grease waiting to go someplace that you don’t want it to go.
Ok we know that ring that clicks stop, there’s your little click stop there. Hope you can see it. And it’s going to match up with this. Put that in and we find it and of course those front won’t stop because there is no stopper, yet it feels good.
Ok this ring goes in next. I like to lube this down here, just a little bit. That gives this ring something to be lubed with. That’s correct English.
Let’s do the outside a little bit, put a very light lube on it and you’ll have some rubbing in here, so you want to get right in here too, it’s a cam; cam for your diaphragm.
You can kind of put it there, but it’s really not going to work. You’ll find out when you put the mount on, because this little pin won’t run in there, it’ll run elsewhere; it wont work right so we’ll put this in here.
Ok, and this will act as it stops when it gets to the end, boom. Stops. Stopping right there. Okay, I tend to put it at F22. Doesn’t matter where you put it as long as you remember where you’re putting it. So this coupler, little cut out here, it’s goin to go right around the little diaphragm kicker so just go, aim forward, boom. No problem, it’s in. This back and forth, great you’re all done.
Three screws and it goes. So these had glue on them, I don’t tend to mess with glue, I don’t re-glue them because usually they’re just fine when they go in. I’ve never had one back out. So I never really worry about it.
Second and the third.
It looks like a Q-tip fluff here, you can see. Get that out of there.
Okay so that works, diaphragm’s opening and closing it.
Nice.
Front element
My next thing I need to do is put my front element in. Okay a little bit of air; it’s going to make a nasty little noise, sorry about the noise if it gets too loud. Just check that, make sure that I didn’t get any dust and voila, comes down, tighten it. Okay so many of you will get to here, and it won’t go to infinity. We’ll this stop ring is not set so it’s just kind of hitting probably the internal works of the lens, just don’t do it very tight. It’s not a big deal. So you’re gonna basically come up, you’re gonna loosen the screw, you’re going to rotate this to stop. Hear a click or snap.
Infinity test
Okay now I’m going to do is, go ahead and run a really quick infinity test on it, I’ll do that off camera. If you want to see it, maybe I’ll show you what I do. For the infinity test I use my F3 here, it’s great for running infinity. It’s right on the money, it’s got a great viewfinder. Love the F3.
I’m gonna put that on, take that outside and I’m going to run a nice infinity test on this thing and make sure it comes to infinity.
It’s not set to infinity. I do have a collimator on it, but only time I use a autocollimator is when I have issues with my camera and I’m not seeing any issue when i was focusing this so there’s no reason for me to run to an autocollimator.
Okay, so we don’t break focus, what I tend to do is put a little bit of red glue on the screws. Ok, just a little bit, just want a little dab on it. On each screw, that way they don’t back out. You don’t lose your focus and this is, you take the stuff off easily with alcohol. So how it goes, let’s see, just a few more things to do. First of all we go ahead and put the filter ring on, screw it down. These are always kind of a pain. That’s where the dimple is, so when I put my set screw which is going to go through here. It should be into this dimple. This dimple sometimes is difficult to find, this one gives me room and I can actually put a little bit of a mark right there so I know when I tighten this ring down. If my set screw hole lines up with that mark I know I’m going to go right into the middle of that dimple. I don’t have to check it or look at this one. It’s easy, this is a nice lens, it’s just a simple basic lens, nothing too thrilling.
Later we’ll do a lot more complicated lenses.
The set screw is in, make sure it’s tight. This may be where I differ from everybody, is that after I put a set screw in, I come back and I get paint on it. Yeah, I set that set screw with a little bit of black paint. Boom, Done. That paint, if you ever see that, it makes it look much better, the other thing is, it actually seals that screw in there. That screw is not going to back out.
Outer ring
The next ring is this outside ring here. Put that on this clip. Screw it all the way down. A little bit of tightness. Didn’t squeeze too tight because once again, you squeeze stuff really tight and threads can bring up more than actually thread on, because you just distort the barrel. You start the barrel, put pressure on the threads underneath it and nothing goes.
Alright so, essentially, I don’t have my cement here right now but I would put this on. I’m going to put on a little bit of cement and essentially we will clean this thing up real quick and we should be done. Here we go. I’m going to do some of these. Make them nice and bright and shiny. That just makes it nice and clean.
This is the little things that customers love; to have a nice shiny lens back.
I’m going to sell this one, I don’t need it, it’s a good little lens. Someone will be very happy to have it. Looks like at one point may have taken a bit of corrosion, so I’m just going to hit that and take some corrosion off. This little white powdery stuff is not a big deal. So just maybe someone had it around some salt, like sea water, some salt deposits, but other than that, this lens is in fantastic condition.
There you go. I’ll finish the front element. Clean that all up, get all the little marks off it and have some glue on it, that’s pretty much it. Thank you for watching. This was a nice little lens to do. Let me put it up for sale, someone will love it. I don’t need it, I got a few of them.
Everybody take care and thank you for watching.