stuck lens cover HZ35W WB650

No idea how to disassemble unfortunately, but my WB650 blades open easily by hand with the camera off and are sprung loaded. Therefore I guess the problem is either...

1. Dirt, crud in the works.
2. Bent blades from a knock.
3. Broken spring.

No. 3 you should be able to feel for.

No.2 you may be lucky and be able to straighten without disassembly as they would likely be bent inwards and could be pulled out, but there's the risk of breakage.

No.1 if it were mine I would try a tiny amount of WD40 dribbled in, but that's me and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.

I would expect this to be grit in the blades. You could try turning the camera on and off several times and helping the blades open and shut with a toothpick or match stick. With luck this may dislodge the grit.
WD40 may work but I would worry about it getting on the lens.

On the Panasonic forum someone had a similar problem and ended up putting a very small spot of super glue on the blades and then leaving them open.

This did mean the blades were fixed in the open position but it didn't affect the operation of the camera.
I hope you manage to fix your camera and do let us know how the outcome.

I would expect this to be grit in the blades. You could try turning the camera on and off several times and helping the blades open and shut with a toothpick or match stick. With luck this may dislodge the grit.
WD40 may work but I would worry about it getting on the lens.

On the Panasonic forum someone had a similar problem and ended up putting a very small spot of super glue on the blades and then leaving them open.

This did mean the blades were fixed in the open position but it didn't affect the operation of the camera.
I hope you manage to fix your camera and do let us know how the outcome.

I would expect this to be grit in the blades. You could try turning the camera on and off several times and helping the blades open and shut with a toothpick or match stick. With luck this may dislodge the grit.
WD40 may work but I would worry about it getting on the lens.

On the Panasonic forum someone had a similar problem and ended up putting a very small spot of super glue on the blades and then leaving them open.

This did mean the blades were fixed in the open position but it didn't affect the operation of the camera.
I hope you manage to fix your camera and do let us know how the outcome.

Sorry about posting the same reply three times but the DPR site went into meltdown just as I pressed the 'post' button.
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Mike

Thanks for the responses. So far I've tried "washing" the mechanism by daubing on small quantities of water, open/close cycle, then drying off what remains. That got the cover to close reliably. It still sticks at about 70% open when opening though.

I recall that there was a blob of water soluble gunk on one of the lens cover leaves a while back which I had carefully wiped off. So my suspicion is that some of that gunk got into the mechanism before cleaning.

I wish I could just disassemble the outermost piece of the telescoping barrel. I'm sure a nice cleaning would do the trick but that is difficult to do from the outside. At worst case I'll just glue the lens cover shutter open but then I'll need another way to protect the lens when packed away.

Hi I took a tumble down a muddy hill with my lens open on my Samsung PL170 and tried all sorts to free the stuck lens,

a combination of the paper trick  and the hoover advised in this forum worked so many thanks for the help, saved me a fortune