This weekends task was a fairly simple one, in the box of stuff there was a few old flash guns. 3 were still in there boxes and now work perfectly, 1 was loose and had some battery acid damage to the battery cover. This is a Sunpak auto 321 model and is quite compact but well jointed so it can be used to bounce the flash in just about any direction. This could be quite a useful tool as the other flashes are either really big or really small! so I set about trying to restore it.
First job was a general clean up with a baby wipe (the joys of having kids, an army of cleaning materials to hand at any time), next came the battery acid. It looked like it had not actually damaged anything but had just crystallized on the cover. With a small pot, some vinegar and a bunch of cotton buds I swabbed vinegar on the affected area and left it for a few minutes. Once it had finished fizzing I cleaned it up with some dry cotton buds and some paper towel. A little rub with some fine emery paper had the contacts clean and shiny again.
The bulb and the rest of the unit looked fine so I dug out some batteries (4 AA's if your interested!) loaded them up and switched it on.
The familiar whistling sound of a flash warming up suggested they may be life, the test light lit up so I pressed it. WAP! It worked. Tried a few more times to check it refreshed OK and them bunged it on the camera to see if it would fire with the shutter. It appeared to work OK so when I get the film developed I'll post up the results. Its quite a good unit, light, compact and versatile its now made it into the box of good stuff.
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