Elmar 35mm f3.5 CLA tips?

[Junebat]

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Just acquired a little Elmar 35mm 3.5 (amazingly tiny lens!) and am wondering if anyone has any tips on how to open it up so that I can clean the lens elements a little? I tried to follow a tutorial on the 50mm Elmar, which got me to removing one push-in ring, but am unsure where to go from there as there's only the one unlike the 50mm.

There's SO little information on this lens online (I searched high and low, on this forum and elsewhere), and I really wanna give it some care (and maybe leave a trail of breadcrumbs for anyone who comes searching for information in the future). Thanks in advance!

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[Pyrogallol]

Welcome and good luck. I haven’t attempted to clean inside such a small lens myself.

[doctorlebel]

I would recommend that you send it to Youxin Ye.  He did a beautiful job on my Elmar 3.5cm f/3.5 screw mount lens.

[lct]

50 minutes ago, Pyrogallol said:

 I haven’t attempted to clean inside such a small lens myself.

+1

[jc_braconi]

1 hour ago, Pyrogallol said:

Welcome and good luck. I haven’t attempted to clean inside such a small lens myself.

+1

[zeitz]

I could not find anything on this lens either.  The closest I could find is Richard Haw's article on disassembly of the Nikkor 35mm f3.5 lens in Leica screw mount.  The optical formula is the same.  The mechanical construction may also have some similarities.

https://richardhaw.com/2018/11/17/repair-w-nikkor-3-5cm-f-3-5-ltm/

Hopefully someone with experience with the Leica 3.5cm lens will replay.

[Junebat]

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Thanks for the responses. I'm not terribly interested in sending it away quite yet, and YYe has had a camera of mine since May and hasn't touched it as far as I know, so I'd rather exhaust my own tinkering before giving it up for half a year or longer. 

Ill check out this guide for the Nikkor, I hadn't realized they cloned that lens! It may give me something more to go off of. Just trying to get as much info as I can before I just start undoing things that may give me greif in the future. 

[zeitz]

1 hour ago, Junebat said:

I hadn't realized they cloned that lens!

And Leitz adopted the Zeiss Tessar optical layout for the Elmars.

[Junebat]

11 minutes ago, zeitz said:

And Leitz adopted the Zeiss Tessar optical layout for the Elmars.

Yeah I knew they were all tessars, which was why I was hoping the other Elmar 50 would give me some insight. I gave it a go but reached some snags (as usual) with some screws that are just so ignorant. I may just settle for it as is or send it in at some point, I guess. Just a drag to lose a lens for such an indeterminately long time (but I do have a summaron, though it's a later one and doesn't sit as nicely on the barnacks, though it does a nice job now that I cleaned up some haze on the rear element of that one--I was hoping this guy wouldn't be exponentially more tricky than that!).

I wish you didn't have to seemingly take apart the whole thing to get the elements out, but maybe you also do not need to take the whole thing apart. This is why I wish there was some info on this lens out there so I could at least know what Must be done to clean out the glass.

[jerzy]

you will need special tools to open the lens so think over if you really want to do it.
There are few mechanical versions of Elmar 3,5cm, this one shall be identical with yours.
Haze accumulates usually on lenses adjacent to aperture blades (green arrow, pict 5). I will explain how you can get in simpliest way to both surfaces.

1. pull off light baffle
2. unscrew retaining ring
3. remove tiny screw on the front ring (screwdriver 1,2mm), unscrew front ring, pull off the whole optical cell
4. unscrew the 2 cemented lenses. You may clean one surface, the other you may reach through the open aperture, from behind. And if you are so far you may clean and lubricate as well aperture ring. It is fixed with 2 screws (arrow, pict 4)

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[pedaes]

Jerzy, that really is very helpful and should probablly be 'pinned' by a Mod.That said, if it were mine I would still send it to someone who knows what they are doing, as these tasks are never straightforward.

[Pyrogallol]

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For reference this is what the Elmar, Nikkor and Canon Serenar look like, all 35mm f3.5 lenses. Top, bottom and side views, the Elmar is the smallest.

[Junebat]

5 hours ago, jerzy said:

you will need special tools to open the lens so think over if you really want to do it.
There are few mechanical versions of Elmar 3,5cm, this one shall be identical with yours.
Haze accumulates usually on lenses adjacent to aperture blades (green arrow, pict 5). I will explain how you can get in simpliest way to both surfaces.

1. pull off light baffle
2. unscrew retaining ring
3. remove tiny screw on the front ring (screwdriver 1,2mm), unscrew front ring, pull off the whole optical cell
4. unscrew the 2 cemented lenses. You may clean one surface, the other you may reach through the open aperture, from behind. And if you are so far you may clean and lubricate as well aperture ring. It is fixed with 2 screws (arrow, pict 4)

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Oh wow! This is awesome. For unscrewing the lenses, what sort of thing would you need for that? I have some of those little rubber bits that help screw in or off these sorts of things. 

I actually am probably going to send this to YYe since I asked him if he would do it and he said if I send it he'll put in it in line with my camera and do both at once. I also think it wouldn't hurt to have the helicoid cleaned up a bit as well. But I'd love a little more detail on how step 4 can be achieved here (for posterity for others at the very least, and because I expect I may find similar lenses one day and want to do it myself). Thanks so much!

[jerzy]

here is just selection of what you might need. What you will really need..... you'll see during opening. These lenses are >70-80 years old, as pedaes wrote - tasks are never straightforward.
And not always you can follow precisely instructions/manuals, you'll need to be inventive
The rear part in Elmar 3,5cm  is just screwed in. Old threads might be stuck, I had cases already that I had to drill 2 holes to use spanner wrench

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[Andy_Shields]

On 8/7/2022 at 3:21 AM, jerzy said:

you will need special tools to open the lens so think over if you really want to do it.
There are few mechanical versions of Elmar 3,5cm, this one shall be identical with yours.
Haze accumulates usually on lenses adjacent to aperture blades (green arrow, pict 5). I will explain how you can get in simpliest way to both surfaces.

1. pull off light baffle
2. unscrew retaining ring
3. remove tiny screw on the front ring (screwdriver 1,2mm), unscrew front ring, pull off the whole optical cell
4. unscrew the 2 cemented lenses. You may clean one surface, the other you may reach through the open aperture, from behind. And if you are so far you may clean and lubricate as well aperture ring. It is fixed with 2 screws (arrow, pict 4)

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I really appreciate this write up you've done. I also have a 35/3.5 Elmar w/ aperture adjacent haze. In the disassembly, I'm rather vexed. Steps 1 & 2 are the same on mine and in fact my front knurled ring has the screw port, but alas, no screw. When I remove the retaining ring the optical block dances back and forth but cannot be removed. There is a screw further down the barrel protected by the focus lever. I've removed it and I've not been able to unscrew the front ring. Logic tells me that of the front ring were removed then the optical block would be free. So perhaps I'm just not using enough force. Any insight on this Elmar variation? Thanks all the same.

[PHOTOSOURCE]

I know this is an old thread but... how do you pull the light baffle off?