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TIL those cheap plastic lens spanners from China are actually worth the $8
I always thought you needed a solid metal spanner for lens element work, the kind that costs $50 or more. A guy at a swap meet in Portland last year sold me a set of three plastic ones for less than a coffee, and I laughed. But I was stuck on a Minolta lens with a stuck rear group last week, and my good spanner was too thick. Out of pure frustration, I tried the thin plastic one. It flexed just enough to get under the tiny notches without slipping and scratching the brass. It worked perfectly. I've used it on three more jobs since. Has anyone else had a tool they wrote off turn out to be a secret weapon for a specific fix?
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jordanr8918d ago
I've seen a few old repair blogs say the same thing about those cheap plastic spanners. The flex is actually a feature not a bug for certain tight spots. My buddy at the camera club swears by his for old Soviet lenses where the notches are super shallow. A solid metal spanner would just skip and gouge the brass on those. So having a flimsy plastic one that conforms a little actually saves you from ruining the lens. It's one of those cases where the cheap tool does the job better than the expensive one because of what it can't do.
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thea_carter2mo ago
That "too thick" thing is exactly why I kept my old metal one in a drawer. The cheap thin ones just fit where the good tools can't.
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rodriguez.cora2mo ago
Hold up, thea_carter, you're telling me you keep a whole separate tool just because it's thin? That seems like a waste of a drawer. A good, solid tool should be able to handle 99% of jobs without bending or breaking. If you need something paper-thin to get into a weird spot, maybe the design is the problem, not the tool. I'd rather have one reliable thing that works hard than a drawer full of specialty items for made-up problems.
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