Today's workbench subject - a Staeble - Telexon lens.

[John Farrell]

This lens, a 135mm f3.8 telephoto, is in Braun Paxette mount. I had noticed it, some time ago, in the back of a cupboard, at a local second hand shop. The owner got round to pricing the lens, last week, and I decided that at $20, it was affordable.

The front and rear elements were quite dirty, and the focusing was very stiff.

The front element came out, after its retaining ring was unscrewed.



I put a drop of mineral turpentine on the ring, and left it overnight, to ease its removal.

To remove the rear element, I had to take off the lens mounting ring. This is secured by 4 grubscrews, at the camera end of the lens.



The brass ring which works the rangefinder can be left on the inner part of the lens mounting ring.



The assembly above can be separated into 2 parts - they screw together. The notch you can see inside the inner part, above engages with the moving part of the lens, when it focuses, and transfers the focus distance to the rangefinder. This assembly was the cause of the stiffness in focusing, it was dry, and gummed with old lubricant.

When I separated the two parts, I didn't mark where they came apart. This means I will have to experiment to find the right spot to screw them together, if I want the DOF mark on the lens to be uppermost.

With the lens mounting ring off, I could unscrew the cap securing the rear element. The glass cleaned up nicely.

[John Farrell]

The lens is back together. There were only 2 possible positions to fit the rear helix inner part. I got it right second time round.



Here is the lens, on a Paxette camera. I intend to load this with film - after I have cleaned up the pressure plate, which has rust spots.
The camera is wearing an accessory rangefinder, because the 85mm lens in the picture is not rangefinder coupled.

[John Farrell]

The pressure plate, after a light rub with 1200 grit paper, wetted with oil. After doing this, I loaded the camera with a scrap film, fired a few shots, then rewound. The wind sprockets weren't fully released by the rewind button, and some of the film sprocket holes ripped.

I flushed out the rewind clutch (next to the sprocket in the picture below) with white spirit, and put a drop of oil on it. I think the camera is now good to go with a film.

[philbirch]

Interesting how you did this. I have my eye on one of these lenses. It didn't occur to me that it may not be rangefinder coupled.

[maisie]

Unfortunately, photos are no longer available.