Chris's camera pages
Retina 1a strip down notes continued
The film advance mechanism
To remove the film advance shaft to check the return spring, first peel back the leather on the camera base plate exposing the three screws around the tripod socket. Do not peel the leather back any more than required. Remove the screws and the tripod socket.
Here you can see the cover disk, remove to uncover the wind shaft.
Remove the three screws seen here on the wind shaft end-plate, hold the spring loaded catch back out of the way and remove the shaft from the camera.
Here you can see top end of the return spring trapped on the slot of the wind shaft.
The lower end of the spring sits in a slot on the end plate. You will be able to see that the spring winds tighter when the film advance shaft is turned in the normal film advance direction and when turned the other way the spring unwinds and tends to jump out of the groove on the wind shaft end-plate.