I’ve used this style (the old Leica fold around, cloth over metal) on Leica, FED, Zorki, and Canon cameras. Even with later Zorki and FED, as well as Zenit cameras whose laths were stamped metal. I used the same style with the 4 cameras (2 were Leica IIIc) I fixed a few days ago, and will continue using them since they work quite nicely. They also made the FED-2 camera which formerly had a metal lath fire with less noise.

I’ve not tried any repair work on the M series Leica yet (but in time, perhaps), but it may be possible that the folded cloth over metal laths may work in them too. The metal laths of the M3 does assure a perfect seal, but the folded cloth laths do make a satisfactory seal when properly made. What I don’t know is the relevance of the position of the the two shutter curtains relative to each other during the cocking, winding, and firing stages. The distance between the laths may be different when they grip each other and may be critical to the operation of the M shutter. Cloth fold-around laths usually overlap by about 3 – 3.5mm during the cocking and standby stages.

Is your Japanese cloth from Aki-Asahi? They sell a very good product, Perfect, hole-free cloth. Unlike what micro-tools is selling: the cloth I got from them was full of tiny pinholes and the material is useless for shutter making.

AND IF you only have a tiny hole in your shutter, I suppose patching is a very feasible option over total replacement. If the shutter cloth in the M3 is still supple, the hole can be patched with some “tape” and black textile paint. The “tape” mentioned here is a bit of cloth cut from USE TYPEWRITER RIBBON – the old fashioned fabric type. This material is made strong, silk-like material and is already black to begin with. The used ribbon, now with less ink, is first cleaned to remove traces of oil-based ink, and dried. A small piece, slightly bigger than the hole to be patched is cut from the old ribbon, and glued on the pinhole’d part of the shutter. Use Elmer’s glue, and let the adhesive dry. Once dry, the cloth patch is painted over with either black textile paint, or plain black latex.

I’ve replaced the shutter curtains in an M3 and suffered a pinhole right after I was done. That was new old-stock shutters, so I bought new cloth material from Japan. Which leaves me with two options; either try to fit new cloth into original metal laths (with the nice light seal gate where the first shutter fits into the second) or do it your way with custom metal laths.

Question; has this simple design of yours worked well, or would you have done it differently if you did it again?

Thanks and kind regards,
Joakim