Shoutout to the little spring I found on the floor of my shop, you saved a whole repair
Last Tuesday I had a Canon AE-1 on the bench that a customer brought in from Sacramento, and the film advance lever was jammed up solid. I took the bottom plate off and spent maybe 20 minutes poking around the gears, and right when I was about to pull the whole winding assembly apart I spotted a tiny spring sitting on the mat under my bench. Turns out it had shot out of the camera when I popped the plate off and I never even heard it land. Without that spring the advance would never have caught right again. I put it back where it belonged with a pair of tweezers and a lot of swearing, and the thing wound smooth on the first try. It got me thinking about how many repairs I have made harder on myself just because a part rolled away and I did not notice. Does anyone here keep a magnet tray under the bench for exactly this reason, or do you have a better trick for catching flying springs?