How To Punish A Poorly Behaved Leica Lens
With A Pair of Channel Locks And Some Elbow Grease

I was in Cape Cod on a PLUG excursion when my Jupiter-12 siezed up. Absolutely refused to change focus or aperture. I was stuck as I had only brought the one lens. And previously I'd been getting some only moderately sucky pictures and, as I'd been drinking, didn't want to stop photographing. I figured, what the heck, I can't make it any worse so I got two sets of channel locks and ripped the thing open like a lobster claw. "How difficult can this be?" I thought. And sure enough, there were only three real parts to the lens -- well, there were more, but once I had the three apart, the rest was pretty inconsequential. I could see that the lens mechanism had become cross threaded. I rethreaded it properly, put it back on the camera and finished up the weekend. The lens is made of some very soft metal (aluminum, I'm guessing) and the channel locks did a serious number on it's cosmetics -- it looks like I put it in a clothes dryer full of rocks for 20 minutes, but it works fine now. No problems.

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