The internal innards of the M6

You might not know the exact feeling, but I'm sure it's possible to understand most parts of it anyway.

Not exactly the way you like to see one of your best cameras, but still it had to be done...

When you're stuck at sea due to the world changing by the hour, it is of course very nice to have your camera ready to shoot a few holes in the air every now and then. 

Eventually the moment comes when your film has reached the end, and you do the same trick you're well used to after having hundreds of rolls going through that very camera. You simply start rewinding the thing. Then, after a couple of turns on the crank, an ugly sound and everything is totally jammed. Nothing is moving either way, and it starts to sink in that even the germans seems to have managed to build something that would break some day if pushed long enough. 

Well... as mentioned above, stuck at sea and of course no service technician available unless you got confidence enough to trust the good old "put your Leica inside a bottle and throw it overboard" sort of mail system. Looking down the ships side at the direction of current I soon discarded that option.

As we got the house full of engineers down in the lower part of this vessel, I could do nothing less than bring the tiny tools out on the desk and start the demolition of the camera to try figure out what might be wrong in there. 

I know, I know... red alarm lights flashing and the "don't do this at home" and all of that sorts! It's not something I recommend, but then again what can you do when you're on board, way out at sea, and with no return ticket back home? I might be stuck here for months for all we know. Think about that! That would be a long time just looking at a jammed Leica, I'll tell you that much. 

After a few hours of just looking inside at wonderful german stuff and engineering you'll get a fair insight into what's supposed to go on anyway, but still you don't want to dig too deep into it at first, trust me! When the top cover had been removed I used a lot of time to try figure out what might have gone south, even though it was quite obvious it had something to do with the film transport and wind-on stuff. I used some time on the internet as well to hopefully get a clue, but no real help to find there. Must be a repair manual or at least a drawing available somewhere? Well, google showed me nothing much but a few posts in forums suggesting the people facing the same problem had loaded their film wrongly or had forgotten to release the film drive sprocket wheels or whatever. That was not my case, at least I know that much.

See? In there somewhere there was trouble in the gears and stuff...

Anyway, after a few hours of tweaking, jacking, pointing, talking, some swearing and a little bit of sweating I had the problem fixed. The shutter and the film transport were totally out of sync, and after tweaking a sprocket wheel and doing adjustments to that little thing to make everything aligned I once again had a working camera.

Actually I think I had the problem fixed a bit earlier, but due to a stupid second fault I probably had introduced myself I couldn't find the problem. It took a good walk out on deck and then digging into the thing again before I suddenly realized I might have got something inside the shutter button out of alignment. So when punching the little pin inside the button used for the good old wire release it suddenly worked as it should, and the way I thought it would way earlier in the day. 

Turns out that the release button on the M6 is a very precisely machined little thing, which you don't actually realize until you have put your very strong glasses on. It needs to be mounted just the right way, or it will not function at all that little rascal. 

Well, when you look back on it almost 24 hrs. later it's OK, because that's the way we learn, isn't it? I just wish I had realized a loupe would be helpful a few hours earlier...

Front end. Only some cleaning now, and we were done for the day. 

And heck! I even managed to give the old thing a little internal clean-up as well, as the innards had some light shining on them for a few hours anyway. Seems like time well spent if you ask me. It feels a lot better now, so let's hope it works well in the years to come. 

We will soon find out anyway, because a new film was put inside this afternoon. 

I'll keep you informed. 

See how well it worked only a couple of hours before the big hick-up? It's one of the heroes in the mess department getting ready to wash the floor for the third time that day...

Oh yes, that's how happy you'll get being a sailor, traveling the world and see the sun every day :))

Meanwhile up there in the thin air around the wheelhouse there is painting going on. It might not seem so, but we're talking bright yellow here. Ship yellow, you know, so it's bright believe me!