FlSwampRat
Member
Many years (Early 1970's) I was in camera repair. I know the frustration of flying springs and, even worse, those tiny ball bearings they used as click stop detents on lenses and so forth.
This most often happens with the front detent pin and spring. Sometimes those parts are very hard to find, especially if you’re old and have a hard time getting on your hands and knees.
Was younger and more limber, but still, crawling around on your hands and knees in a workshop with other repairmen, peering under other folks workbenches with a flashlight was frustrating for me, although amusing for them. A strong magnet epoxyed onto a stick helped for under the benches and seemed like every day, at least once, someone was sweeping the floor to find some errant part. When I work on something nowadays, I try to do it in as enclosed a small space as possible.
Bear in mind such wonderful things as some stainless steels, brass, plastic, etc. are gleefully immune to magnetism. Being in the pawn business now I can testify to the fun of trying to find a small dropped gold earring. Gold is right up there with those metals that thumb their collective noses at magnets.
I agree with you, Gunny, it's always best to have extra small parts like that and ordering in small quantities is smarter than singly. Having to stop your project and wait for delivery of some small part is far more frustrating than the cost of the spring or whatever flew south for the winter. When at Home Depot buying small parts for, say a plumbing project, I always buy a few extra elbows or whatever to save the 45 minute round trip to buy a $.59 fitting.
