Slowly but surely the Ross is coming together, literally. I have reassembled the base. It’s much shiner now. You can see that it is not going to look “as new” the pitting is too deep, and I don’t want to destroy all signs of its history by sanding it heavily. In this case to do so would be to remove enormous amounts of metal and it is really not possible. To get the name plate to a perfect finish would result in the removal of the engraving which obviously would be foolish. The pitting is still present in places but the corrosion has been treated so it should be good for another 100 years. There’s still lots to do though and this microscope is definitely one of the worst I’ve done, it’s in a worse state than my experimental Dunscombe which was black all over when I got it. Each piece is taking hours of work. It is enormously satisfying though when it starts to take shape. Onward and upward – the tubes are already done so really I’m heading middle-ward, to the REALLY tricky bits.
