Christmas is early this year! I was finally able to find what I have been searching for many years, the 'holy grail' of stereomicroscopes, the Wild M10!
The scope came with the Leica ergo binocular, Wild 10x eyepieces and PlanApo 1x objective. It was on a large Leica icident light stand but I promptly put it on my Leica BF/DF/RC stand MDG 32 (Leica number 10 447 390) which allows brightfield, darkfield and Rotterman contrast. The scope is from the first half of 90ies and the stand/base is from about 20 years ago. It was possible to create this combo thanks to blueprints from Leica Finland for the focusing column adapter that enables one to put Wild stereos (the M3Z and the Wild M10) that use the trapezoidal (or side-faced) focusing column on the new Leica bases. I paid to a friend who has a metal workshop with milling machines etc. and he created the adapter for me from thick aluminum scrap parts (it was impossible to find the Leica made original adapter any more). The adapter works perfectly! And what about the image quality...it is simply superb! I thought my previous workhorse, a Wild M3Z with a PlanApo objective and the original Wild BF/DF base produced very, very good results, but the Wild M10 and the Leica Rotterman base blow them out of the water! Such a joy to use. Once I get the Reichert Polyvar set up and find a Leitz Diavert, I think I am set for life
Here's some pics of the setup:
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- 2023-07-13 10_59_44-20230712_213618.jpg (127.67 KiB) Viewed 8409 times
- 20230712_213634.jpg (95.69 KiB) Viewed 8409 times
I had my friend make another adapter as well, this one is for the Wild 25mm round focusing columns to be connected to these new Leica bases. Here's two pics of this adapter:
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- 20230713_095333.jpg (148.17 KiB) Viewed 8411 times
I already had a couple of Wild original adapter plates that enable using a trapezoidal focusing column on older Wild bases intended for the 25mm round column. So now I can combine pretty much any Wild or Leica stereo on nearly any Wild or Leica base. Great fun and gives many options.
Unfortunately, when testing the scope yesterday, I immediately found out that the fine focus isn't working. The coarse focus functions as it should but when I try to use fine focus, the knobs just turn (and very, very lightly, which of course is a sign or problems) but the focus does not change. Could this be an adjustment problem? I have the Wild M10 user manual as pdf but there was nothing on adjusting fine focus. I hope it's nothing too serious.