Leica Stuck filter - any tips on how to remove?

Amin

Hall of Famer
One of my lenses has a dented filter that I am having trouble removing. Have tried rubber gloves and also tried turning the filter with needle nose pliers. It won't budge. Any other ideas/tips for removing a stuck filter?
 
I put them face down on a rubber mouse pad, grab the back with second rubber mousepad- and turn with all my might. If that does not work, I have pliers with a circular head that gets a firm grip. They are very old.
 
Swearing a lot has helped me a couple of times.
What about tapping it lightly - like you would a stubborn jar top - counter-clockwise, with something that won't hurt it, of course.. Just a thought. Your's may be on there to tightly for it to work.
 
There are a couple of different ways that filters can get stuck - they can cross-thread (especially if you confuse 40.5E with 40.5ES); they can have a lot of friction when the filter bottoms out (I'm guessing this is why Zeiss lenses had knurling), and they can just plain rust together. If it's the second or third, you might have luck tapping the side of the filter lightly with a metal object or sticking the filter in a freezer to break the bond (brass and aluminum don't contract or expand at the same rate, so if you have different metals screwed together this will sometimes work - I suppose that mild heating could do the same thing). Aluminum filter stuck on an aluminum lens, maybe less so.

In the future, I would recommend lubing the filter's threads and its rear rim with pencil lead (graphite). Not enough to flake off onto the front element of the lens but just enough to prevent the filter from getting too cozy with the lens thread.

I have found that with Japanese and German lenses of hard anodized aluminum that B+W brass filters (especially the older front-loading ones) are the things that get stuck the most. I've had the front of a Kobalux 21 and the front barrel of a Hexar AF screw off like this. Hoyas bind the least. Plastic filter rings are actually the best, but you don't often see them on good filters.

Whatever you do, don't distort the filter's front ring because that can make the situation much, much worse.

Dante
 
One of my lenses has a dented filter that I am having trouble removing. Have tried rubber gloves and also tried turning the filter with needle nose pliers. It won't budge. Any other ideas/tips for removing a stuck filter?

Given it's few days since posting this, how did you get on? In a similar situation, and given the filter is possibly scrap anyway, I would take a pair of regular pliers, the sort of pliers with groves on their inner blades, and apply a turning force applied between the inner and outer circumference. I would also find something with a similar radius to the filter ring (you could possibly fashion this from dense plastic) to make an inner quadrant to offer purchase for the pliers. What I'm trying to describe is an arrangement to prevent the pliers from distorting the filter ring due to point contact, as that could make matters worse. A diagram would help, but not from my iPad!
 
So far I've still been unable to remove it. Will probably send it to someone with better tools and skills :).
 
I had a filter get stuck today: I use a hard rubber stopper pushed firmly against the filter and a rubber pad to hold the lens. Push and Turn seems to help loosen it up.
 
That has to be one large rubber-stopper, whatever the lens, and I wasn't even thinking of the Noctilux!

I get the idea though, surface contact around the whole circumference and a reasonable coefficient of friction, too. In Amin's case he mentioned a dent that could well have distorted the thread, leading to interference and binding with sky high friction.
 
I had this happen to me a few times when I was younger and lived with my parents. I tried everything I could think of and failed. My mum, however, had a rubber band gripper device which she used to get lids off jars. It took me seconds once she'd shown me how to use it.
 
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