Question about the e-clip trick on Nikon F2 mirror boxes

So I’ve been repairing old Nikon F2 bodies for like 3 years now. And I always struggled with those tiny e-clips that hold the mirror box assembly together. Every time I’d try to get them back on, they’d fly across the room and I’d spend 20 minutes crawling around with a magnet. Last Saturday I had a customer’s F2 on the bench and lost one of those clips for like the 5th time. Got so frustrated I went to grab a beer from the fridge. My buddy who works on vintage cars was over and saw me fiddling with the new clip. He just goes "why don’t you stick it on a toothpick with some blue tack first?" I literally never thought of that. Tried it and it worked perfectly first try, no flying clips. Been doing it the hard way for 3 years for nothing. Has anyone else had a dumb simple fix like that totally change their workflow?

2 comments

2 Comments

casey84317d ago

Blue tack on a toothpick is a good one. I did something similar trying to keep screws from rolling away on a circuit board. Ended up just pressing them into a piece of electrical tape stuck to my desk, flipping the tape over to work on them. Works fine but you gotta peel each one off carefully or the tape grabs the screwdriver tip instead.

wendygrant16d ago

Used a dab of superglue on a matchstick to hold tiny screws in place, worked like magic.