I'm team old-school grease over synthetic for shutter work

Been fixing cameras for about 12 years now, and I keep hearing people say synthetic lubricants are the way to go on everything. Last month I tried it on a Pentax Spotmatic's slow speed escapement and had to redo the whole job three days later cause the timing was off. Swapped back to a tiny dab of vintage Nye grease and it ran smooth as ever. Anyone else find certain jobs just don't take well to the new stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_charles2mo agoMost Upvoted

Had pretty much the exact same thing with an old Nikon F. The synthetic stuff just made everything feel gritty after a week. Went back to what I've been using on those older shutters and it's been fine ever since.

ellis.hayden2mo ago

Has anyone else found that synthetic just doesn't bond right to certain old metal parts? I remember restoring a beat up Yashica Mat 124G and the shutter speeds were all over the place with modern stuff. A tiny bit of that thick Nye grease on the slow speed cams and it went back to butter. Sometimes I think these new lubricants are too thin and just run off or get sticky in weird ways.

patricia_green211mo ago

Whoa, hold on @ellis.hayden, you actually got a Yashica Mat 124G back to butter with Nye grease? That's wild, because I've heard those cams are super finicky. I've only ever worked on old Pentax spotmatics with that thick stuff, but I always worry it's too heavy for the fragile bits. I bet that Yashica shutter sounds like a dream now!