Progress is being made, albeit at a much slower pace than I'd anticipated (life has a nasty habit of getting in the way) but I have been making notes and I'll write it all up at some point.

The first phoenix from the flames has coughed into life and I've just run 20 shots of film through her (I'll finish it tomorrow when I get more time). The development of this film will be the proof of the pudding because I decided to rely entirely on the camera's metering to see how badly (or not) things are out of kilter. Everything has been cleaned and lubed but I've held fire with the adjust part as it sounds about right, tricky to tell with the faster speeds by ear, so I've gone for a wide variety of photos using all speeds. Everything is freshly sealed so I'm confident it's light-tight if nothing else.

She certainly looks the part and she handles wonderfully so I'm really hoping she comes up with the goods. A quick teaser pic:




This was taken last Thursday; jobs left to do at this point were to seal the back door channels, re-stick the front leatherette and fit a 1mm ball bearing under the shutter lock switch. Only two of the cameras came with these and I managed to lose both of them (when handling 1mm ball bearings I don't recommend working over carpet) so I had to order some from Germany. To be fair it gave me an excuse to get some 1.5mm ones to go in the lens of an Olympus Trip that I'd been meaning to do for ages (no, I never learn with the whole carpet thing). They arrived and the camera was finished on Friday.

On Sunday I went to the camera fair in Beaconsfield and bought some near-dated process paid Fuji Sensia 400 for quite a good price, and a mint (but with tatty case) M200/4 for just £27. Which was nice.

On the down side, she has since lost the black disc from the front of the stop-down lever, but I have another 2 so I'll investigate further what glue I need before sticking another in its place.

I'll let you know if it all works, keep your fingers' crossed for me!

The light seal kit turned up today but I'm off out for a bbq / birthday bash so no time to get cracking unfortunately. I did, however, make a start by stripping down the most obviously broken of the 4 bodies (the one where the meter had been de-soldered). As I went through it became obvious that this body had been stripped for internal parts before as there were several screws missing as well as the spacers for the front standard - it's pretty safe to assume that this one won't be taking any more photos...

It has taught me an extremely valuable lesson though; when taking an MX apart for servicing / cleaning then NEVER remove the mirror box unless it's absolutely vital - it's pretty much impossible to get it mounted again! Fortunately everything I really need to get at is reachable with the mirror box in place so that's exactly where the other three will be staying. Always nice at times like these to have a practice body to find these things out on...

The first body has yielded a couple of nice parts; the best self timer / stop down lever of the four (absolutely unmarked) and the speed indicator dial from inside the viewfinder looks to be much nicer than the one in the body I'd intended keeping. I've also got a lovely prism (don't know what I'll do with it - home made periscope anybody?) and a very nicely weighted cage for the focus screen. Unfortunately, the screen itself looked like it had been run over at some point with large scratches over the entire surface - a real shame as one of the other bodies is missing the screen entirely so I only have two of them, as a result I've revised my "complete cameras at the end of the project" estimate down to two.

I'll take some photos of progress tomorrow.

Cheers fella - I think I'm sorted for tools, although I don't have a microscope and I'm hoping I don't need one! Once I've finished my uber-jigsaw I should have a couple of spare MX bodies if you fancy one to play with

Still no sign of the seal material so doesn't look like I'll be making much of a start this weekend, however, I have ground down the points on some circlip pliers in readiness - they can be adjusted to fit all those awkward little locking nuts now and much easier to find than the Pentax special tools!

I'm turning this into a work-in-progress thread in case it inspires anybody else to rescue an old camera or three. Progress, however, is very slow at the moment due to other commitments and the fact that I'm still waiting for my seal material to turn up from the USA.

Some good news though; picked up some batteries earlier and tested the meters - 3 of the 4 actually worked and, even better, all three were within 1/2 EV of my K10D at various tested settings - result!

The one that doesn't function has already been de-soldered at several points so if it had worked it would have been miraculous. I'm going to use all of the cameras to cross-reference such niceities as wiring so there's an outside chance I can make all 4 meters work, looks like I'm short of a few pieces (rewind crank, shutter button, etc) to make 4 complete MX's but I am now hopeful that 3 fully operational bodies will come out of all this...

They've just arrived and I have to say I'm very pleased!

One of the cameras seems to be working very well (except the shutter indicator in the VF is out by 1EV - easy fix though), although it's also the one with the largest dent in the top plate. There's one very good top plate on a completely seized body which I'll be swapping over and I've ordered a new light seal kit from Interslice along with a new bottle of watch oil and a tube of lithium grease (which also arrived today). As soon as the light seal material arrives I'll begin stripping it down for a full CLA.

The lens that the vendor has thrown in (M50/1.7) is pretty much mint and even had the original caps so I can't complain there either! In fact, I stuck it on the K10D to take a few record shots of my new toys:

Front right is working MX; front left is earmarked as top plate donor




Nice camera, shame about the cosmetics




Nice cosmetics, shame about the camera




As you can see, two of the bodies have already had quite a few bits removed, although there's a bag'o'bits included. My initial impression is that I should get 1x near-mint MX and 1x working-but-dented MX from the whole lot with a few parts left over at the end. None of them have any batteries so I can't check if the meters work (or how accurate they may be) but I'll get this sorted over the next few days too.

Might even stretch to some new covering; the cobalt blue kidskin at www.cameraleather.com has caught my eye...

It did appeal to me more than any other film-era camera; I downloaded the owners and service manuals last week and have been using both as bedtime reading - I'm quite excited about their arrival

...and with any luck I might get to join all you MX users too - it may take a little while though.

I just bought these on eBay: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=330225439770&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=014

I'm hoping to salvage at least one (if it's two then even better!) working camera from this lot so keep your fingers crossed for me.

Welcome Jonathan, nice picture in the competition.

10 points to all those correctly identifying it as Brill windmill and no Clarky, it's not still in operation. Most of the original machinery is in there though and during the summer they open it up on Sundays for people to have a look around - it'll be interesting to see how far the renovation work's gone on inside there.

And yes, I hadn't thought of the first as a scene setter but that's effectively what it is. The first 10 shots were taken just walking around it and shooting it straight from all angles - I just wanted to record it for posterity now the restoration's been done.

Glad people seem to like the 2nd and 3rd ones as they're more typical of the bulk I took earlier - there were some great cloud formations to make silhouettes against - can we wind back the competition a couple of weeks please?