MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Hi together,

included with a 1960s Bausch&Lomb Dynazoom I got this mountant: Balsam 819-A by Perfect Safest Chemicals.
It is probably as old as the neary unused microscope and perfectly fluid. Does somebaody have an idea what it can be used for and what it contains?
In Germany CAEDAX was very popular but production was stopped as it contained PCBs. How about this mountant?

Bob

does it smell like xylene?

Also, how is the Dynazoom so far? I finally got mine to work after replacing that one damned lens and then laboriously working the interpupillary adjustment over and over again with a little light machine oil. I like it-- the eyepieces and subsequent FOV are quite nice, and the zoom is neat when hunting down the creatures.

Hi Bram,

I haven't opened it yet. It might be something like canadabalsam?

It looks as if the Dynazoom will live. The eyepiece tube bridge came disconnected but seems to be straight. Fine and coarse focus are too stiff but seem to be intact. Some lenses in the head need a bit of cleaning but it doesn't look like damage. The objectives look fine but I havent checked them with the phase telescope and so on. The microscope has hardly been used - maybe the eyepiece tube bridge arrived with loose screws from new and it never was fixed. Mine is the 160mm version with zoom but no trino head, stage with low knobs, 4 achromat objectives and Optilume basic illuminator. There is some debris from disintegrated old black foam. The eyepieces give a very wide field. So overall probably a nice microscope when I have refurbished it.

At the moment I'm preparing my holiday kit. I refurbished an unused Bundeswehr Zeiss Standard Junior (a black 1960s microscope apparently made in 1988!) and converted it to LED lighting. It was very cheap as the fine focus didn't work - just hardened grease.

Bob