MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

YES! And, we almost take styrofoam packing and form-fitted packaging for granted these days. I was trained by a machinist who went through the German 4 yr apprentice program for master machinist and trained in the shadow of the Leitz plant back in the late 1950s. I asked him one day (while packing u...

This is a wonderful post... it speaks to a sortuv homespun almost "craft industry" notion of manufacturing that few people have an understanding of today. The Leitz plant in Wetzlar, back during this era, employed about 500 workers. Of all the "manufactured" things I collect, Leitz microscopes demon...

One other caution... that knob is made of bakelite which, while it is a wonderful and durable, even insulating material, IT IS EXTREMELY BRITTLE. Use a drive pin punch for knocking that pin out and make sure the punch is a little undersized in relation to the pin diameter. Bakelite is a phenolic mat...

You need a "drill block" to use as an anvil. I've improvised one once by buying a small galvanized pipe couple at Lowe's Home Improvement and used a triangle file to make a couple of v notches in one of the ends when you set the coupler on end like a soda can. The shaft will seat nicely in the v not...

GaryB, I appreciate your encouragement! Sometimes I feel like I've gone to hell and back for this scope. I had one Ebay deal going for a Ortho Pol rotating stage from England - it was off an Ortho Pol that someone parted out. It ended up being a scam with a fake bidder. I finally found another stage...

Hey KurtM! I'll have to say to you, what I've mentioned to the others... NICE website! I gotta get with the program and come up with something like that myself. I must admit, I am somewhat ignorant about creating such things but am gonna have to learn! I particularly admire your AO Model 33. I've lo...

THANKS for the comments guys! I'm going to be using these as peripheral lab benches in a YouTube microscopy studio in the next year or so... more to come!

JeffO

OMG, Rod - LOVE those pics! I must admit, I have a guilty pleasure of looking at home astronomy setups on the internet and I have visited your site before! I am intrigued by those ortho illuminator pics and particularly like that paint finish on the ortho. I have been doing a lot of paint finish and...

Hello Bob! I apprenticed for 4 years in machining and microscope repair and my teacher was German and had come to the United States in 1961. At that time, Germany required mandatory conscription military service and my teacher, Klaus Wirbelauer had one brother, Horst who, due to having lost their fa...

"Hello Rod!" (lemme go get another cup of coffee before I get back to the group... the coffee pot is about 12 steps away!)... I like your trio! Somewhere out in my repair bone yard, I've got one of those Series 6 stands with a monocular camera tube on it. I've always admired the mechanical stages on...

*that* is exquisite! Makes me happy to look at it in the macro - can't even fathom the hours of enjoyment they'll bring under the scopes! THANKS for sharing that haul!

At long last, I'm gonna declare that I'm finished with building my Ortholux I POL. Got in this epi Pol rig about a month ago and it replaced the epi phase contrast I had in it's mount. I'm proud that this setup is configured with Wollaston calcite prisms in both the transmitted and incident paths. T...

I'm a big Leitz and Zeiss man but here's the problem... I get on this forum and see the neat toys you other guys work with and then I start poking around on Fleabay and "click", "click", before I hardly realize it, I've started collecting more toys myself. The other problem is, I'm slightly nostalgi...

I'm a thrift store addict and office furniture is high on the list of things that get donated to them. Just about the only thing that's as ubiquitous is coffee mugs! In this post, I'm going to demonstrate how I turned a $20 conference table into 2 very practical laboratory benches for microscopy. Th...

I LOVE IT! I had forgotten I had this cone and, based on the drawer I re-discovered it in, I think *this* one came from Scientific Industrial Supply Co. just outside of Chicago back in the 1990s. I'm gonna do a post about this someday but, back then, Norman Frankl sold me 9 huge boxes of Leitz appar...

THANK YOU! MichaelG. That literature definitely shows it!

I've accumulated a fair amount of Leitz Ultropak apparatus over the years and was wondering if any fellow users have experience with the very looooong dipping cone? I've included some pics next to a US dime for some idea of scale as well as having it mounted in an Orthoplan Ultropak. I can already t...

Here's my B&L SZ4 that I mentioned in my prior comment. This style of boom stand are readily available on Fleabay for not much and, even though I've upgraded to the Zeiss OPMI, I still use this one just as much out in the machine shop.

This post was inspired by reading through several other member's accounts of finding GREAT DEALS on Fleabay, etc... I'm a thrift store addict and a machinist, so I've got a route of thrift stores and re-cyclers I routinely visit. I found this lonely Zeiss 6S at the scrap yard about 2 miles from my h...

I've always loved that scope - I have two Stereozooms, both model SZ4. I use one in my machine shop and its in the old blue-grey paint mounted on a matching boom stand. You could put a body under that thing and, frankly, the most use it ever gets is to see what I'm doing during "surgery", ie pulling...

"einige meiner Lieblingsdinge"???? I don't have any real use for doing polarizing microscopy, but I love hoarding microscopes since I'm a machinist and optical instrument fine mechanic - Shown are two of my favorite children - the Orthoplan POL, I'm getting ready to regrease and overhaul the head to...

OH YEAH, and the one on the Aristophot platform is one of my Orthos rigged with epi-flourescence! I have three Aristophots and I LOVE THEM as microscope bases!

There was a later version of the elevating base called a Mipolam Pad. It was more rectangular, extending outside the base of the "T" , with sloping arm rests. It was recommended when a fluorescence illuminator was installed, which hung below the base of the microscope. The one included with your mi...

That was the correct link that was posted in the responses but what you have is NOT the multipurpose microscope but actually the mini load hardness tester. I am a microscope repairman and machinist and I have the earlier, greenish painted version of this scope. It uses a diamond tip in order to test...

MichaelG., I must confess, *that* base/riser has me completely stymied as well!! In fact, it's the reason I bought the scope - for just that riser that I've NEVER seen listed in any catalog or shown in any pic anywhere before. It turns out that the riser originally came from the large Maryland Leitz...

I won a trip to the 37th International Science and Engineering Fair in Fort Worth, Texas in 1986 and, as part of one of our little daily "field trips," signed up to tour both the preserved specimen collection AND the electron microscope imaging center at the university of Texas at Austin. In one of ...

I'm an Ortholux I hoarder and I'm wondering if any fellow Ortho collectors have ever run across one of these "428" nosepieces before? I love the look of it because it's buff (1970ish) chrome and more reminiscent of the Orthoplan/Ortho II designs - ie, numbered slots, slider slot, 5 position, interna...

What others have indicated is true regarding the warm copper tone of the brass components of the vintage, "unpolished" scope. That hue/patina is due entirely to shellac that was applied over the polished brass as an anti-corrosive. I am a machinist and fine mechanic specializing in optical instrumen...

That 880 microtome is indeed quit a score. I have one of them in addition to the large AO 860 sliding, sledge type and a couple of the AO 820 rotary style. These days, almost all microtomes work by a chopping motion of passing the specimen over the cutting edge. If you carefully watch as the 880 mak...

For about twenty years, I've been regretting NOT adopting a pile of old American Optical "group" microscope illuminators. I've tried to find out what the catalog number for these was and turn up nuthin' - they would make great desk lamps. I used to work as a supervisor for the general biology sectio...