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Not sure what happened to this poor thing

This is the stage from a smith, Beck and Beck Best microscope. I’m not sure what happened to the poor thing! The entire microscope (not just the stage) is covered in what appears to dirt and mould. However, it is not just dirt, it appears to be varnish encrusted with dirt and mould.

The substance is rock hard and takes a great deal of work to remove. I think the microscope was stored somewhere without a box, varnish or something similar has been spilled on it and dirt has fallen into the still-wet coating. At least that’s what it looks like. I have finished restoring most of the microscope, just the stage left to do.

I shall post a picture of the microscope when it is completed. I need to get on, I have two telecopes and two oher microscopes to do..

Mastered it!

Just a quick note to let people know that I was recently awarded a Masters Degree in Preventive Conservation with distinction. Well, I have my final marks – I don’t have the certificate yet, that should arrive in the next few weeks. I shall post a picture when the certificate arrives. Unsurprisingly, my dissertation was written about the lacquers used on Edwardian and Victorian scientific instruments.

It’s my first Arts degree, my other degrees and PhD are in the sciences so it’s quite exciting. I’m an artist!

A condenser for a Beck

This Beck had no lacquer left although it was in good condition, not only did the owner want the microscope re-lacquered; he wanted a new condenser made so he didn’t need to use the original, separate bullseye condenser. This presented quite a challenge as there is very limited space under the microscope stage and any condenser would have to be in keeping with Beck microscopes of the period.

Beck before work
Separate bullseye condenser

Construction

A 1/4″ objective was used as a condenser lens and a tiny aperture iris was obtained. The aperture iris and condenser were fixed inside a ring with centering screws (see gallery below for images) and the objective was attached via an RMS thread. The rack which carries the condenser unit was attached to another ring clamped onto the bottom of the stage (which originally carried the aperture wheel). This was convenient because the new condenser could be removed easily and the original aperture wheel reattached, no permanent alterations are required.

The original mirror was positioned in such a way that there was insufficient travel for the condenser on the rack, insufficient travel made the whole thing rather pointless so to overcome this a small sliding tube was inserted inside the tube which carried the original mirror – once again avoiding the need to make any permanent changes to the microscope. The new tube was turned down so that it had a marginally smaller outer diameter than the original one in the manner of an aerial. The new tube can be pulled down from inside the original tube when required and pushes back up to allow the microscope to be stored in the upright position.

A coat of lacquer and the new condenser was magically transformed! I think Beck would be happy.

New mirror which slides up and down
Underside
Removable attachment to stage
Board for displaying microscope under a bell jar made by a carpenter friend of mine.
Bottom of condenser showing aperture and centering mechanisim
side view of condenser
Drawing of part of condenser

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! What will 2022 hold for us I wonder? For me there will certainly be more microscopes and plenty of lacquer. By the end of the year I should have completed my MA in preventive conservation too. I have been doing my MA part time and the first year went very well, my grades were good and I enjoyed it. I know more about relative humidity and antique conservation than I ever wanted to know and I am currently obsessing over the relative humidity in my workshop.

When the workshop was first built it had a few small leaks, the relative humidity was too high and mould developed around the edges of the room. I started monitoring the temperature and relative humidty and I bought a small dehumidifier which helped a great deal. Recently my dehumidifer broke down so I have a new one (a Meaco DD8L) which is much more energy efficient and generally more snazzy. Rather than running constantly like my old one did, it takes a sample of the air every 30 minutes and turns on if necessary saving a great deal of electricity. It certainly does what it says. You can see the humidity gradually increase and then drop again as the machine switches on. My humidity sensor is reading about 5% too low, but you get the idea.

Such things bring me joy!

New website, new logo!

Logo

Brass and Glass has a new snazzy website with a new snazzy logo. I’m very pleased with it, I think it looks a bit smarter and it feels more personalized and special now.

My husband is the bearer of a coat of arms (technically his father is the current bearer, but let’s not split hairs). The Thoyts coat of arms consists of gold stars (mullets) on an azure background. In heraldry, the stars originally represented a knight’s spurs although it isn’t always the case. The symbol for the planet Venus is also present and it is unclear what meaning this has, if indeed it has any meaning at all. The meanings of heraldic symbols can be bad puns, their meanings can be lost in time or sometimes they are only there because they look good. The crest is a heath-cock (grouse) rising with the Venus symbol on its chest.

Through marriage the Thoyts family combined their coat of arms with that of the Burfoot family, and I have loosely based my logo on this. My family does not have a coat of arms because I come from a long line of non-conformist peasants, so for my contribution to the new coat of arms I substituted the Burfoot stars for microscopes while keeping the black background. I’m sure the Burfoots would be horrified.

Click on the thumbnails below to see the progression of the Coat of Arms

Beck Folding Microscope

Here’s the before and after pictures of a microscope I have just finished, a Beck folding binocular microscope. It wasn’t in terrible condition but where it may have got damp at some point because the metal was quite pitted, especially where the lacquer was lost.

Here is the same microscope afterwards, the dark patches are gone, as are the green patches of corrosion. It hasn’t lost all signs of age but it looks much better than it did. The stage clips and the edges of the fine focus knob have been silvered

Ernie the Reichert

This is Ernie, he’s a Reichert and he used to work in milk testing. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of him before lacquering. He had some deep scratches. I wasn’t able to get all of them out on the tube because of the enormous amount of engraving on the tube but I managed to get the really bad ones out of the foot. 

I did take one picture of Ernie before he was lacquered, just the foot. I took the picture because I was impressed by the difference in colour between the faded and unfaded areas. Where the upright was attached to the foot, no light could penetrate resulting in a dramatic colour difference. 

I’m very pleased with him, he’s come out well. 

I came, I saw, I conquered

Never, in the history of microscopes has a microscope given me so much trouble. I don’t know why but this piece of a Reichert just did not want to be lacquered. I did it again and again and again. It ran, it dripped, it missed bits. I tried using cloths, pads, brushes, foam, I tried hot, warm and cold metal. The thing was out to get me.

It happens sometimes, you just have a bad day, but the good thing about lacquering microscopes is that if you mess it up you can just take the lacquer off and redo it. Not that that is much comfort on the third day of trying having used up 100 mls of lacquer.

I got there in the end. The Reichert (whose name is Ernie) is now my friend again. Now for the trickier bits.

New condenser for Oberhaeuser

This Oberhauser drum microscope needed a new mirror and a new condenser. The condenser arm and holder have been made using a coping saw and hand files and special screws were made which allow the condenser arm to be repositioned whilst remaining firm. The condenser mount was made on the lathe. It just needs painting olive green now to match the rest of the microscope. It can be removed and fits neatly into the box with the rest of the microscope as the original would have done.

This microscope does not need any relacquering as the original lacquer  is still 99% intact. I have taken some pictures using the microscope – one is of a xylophyte stem and the other is of radiolarians.

Pllischer progress

The Pillischer is coming along, as you can see I haven’t done the tube holder or bar yet because I have problems with them. The tube holder  has been attacked with a wrench at some point and is distorted so that the tube is extremely stiff. I am not entirely sure how to sort it out. You can get the tube in and out but it takes the strength of Atlas.

There’s a spring missing from the fine focus mechanism too so that will have to  be replaced. At least the paint is off. That took a lot of sandpaper and hard work.

The worst microscope I have ever seen

This one is going to take a long time for a small microscope. A Pillischer International, the serial number is 2905 for those that have records of such things. It’s my own microscope and I can only imagine I decided self torture was cool on the day I bought it. It has been spray painted a copper pink colour. The spray painter did quite a good job in that they took the microscope to pieces (mostly) but the paint has etched the surface really badly and stained it too. The metal is so badly damaged that I have spent a day just on the foot.

I have had to be quite aggressive, I have stripped the paint off with paint stripper and then I have filed the metal and used 600 grit sandpaper. I would usually not use such harsh abrasives. That was just enough to remove the last traces of paint. Once I had removed the paint I used pumice and rouge as normal. There are still some flaws in the metal but I have to console myself with the fact that the flaws are part of its history.

I have only done the foot so far. My hands are aching from polishing so it’s time for a break.

Henry Crouch Binocular

This Henry Crouch had been converted from monocular to binocular at some point in its history but the additional tube had never been lacquered. The lacquer on the original tube was mostly intact apart from a few knocks and bumps so it was only necessary to lacquer the one, unlacquered tube. The original lacquered tube was a beautiful colour, a rich yellow with a hint of chocolate brown.  I was somewhat surprised when I saw this microscope because I have never seen such an eye catching colour before. The photos don’t do it justice, in some lights it appears chocolate brown and in other lights it appears yellow. I did wonder if I would be able to match the colour when I first saw it but the use of aniline dye made it much simpler than I first feared.  Henry Crouch microscopes often used  aniline dyes. The rest of the microscope was lacquered with yellow, a lovely two-tone specimen.

The microscope was missing an aperture wheel and tensioning screws for the rack. The mirror gimbal was broken in two (held together with string) and the mirror holder was thin and cracked. I made new screws, stage clips, an aperture wheel and a mirror gimbal and holder. The stage had lost all its colour so that was blackened and the foot which had peeling paint on it was stripped and chemically blackened as it would have been originally. The rack now moves as it should and it looks very smart indeed. The  before and after pictures are below

Another day, another microscope

This is a Watson Edinburgh that has been mistreated. I have taken it apart now and starting removing the traces of old lacquer with ultrafine wire wool and ethanol. Once that is complete I will have to decorrode and polish. I have recruited my husband to help me with thepolishing.

The Watson Edinburgh doesn’t need any new parts, the rack and pinion are fine and no screws are missing. It’s all down to the lacquer. I’m not going to to much to the foot or other chemically blackened areas, just a clean for them.

Let’s see what we can do for this little one…

The completed Ross

The Ross has turned out well, it had heavy pitting and took a lot of work. As you can see it does not look brand new, it still has signs of its age. The Ross was polished entirely by hand before lacquering. It needed several new screws at the rear and on the bar of the microscope as the original metal used contained a lot of lead which shears easily.

This is a complex microscope, every single screw was hand made to fit each screw hole. The left hand screw of a pair is not interchangeable with the right hand screw so it was important to write down and photograph where each and every screw came from as the microscope was taken apart. I’m a big fan of standardisation but that came later.

Not all of the screws were put in straight either! The legs which should be interchangeable, being identical shapes, were not interchangeable as whoever made the microscope screwed one of the screws in at an angle of about 20 degrees. Nobody could ever argue this was  anything but completely handmade. A handmade microscope deserves hand polishing and hand lacquering. I have a new respect for (and a few new grudges against) Mr Ross.

The only parts I have not relacquered is the Wenham Prism. The heat involved in hot lacquering could easily damage the prism so it’s best left as it is. The mirror being very chunky acts as a great heat sink so I was able to relacquer that.

Spencer Jug Handle microscope completed

The Spencer is complete. If you recall, this poor Spencer had been spray painted black from top to bottom including the condenser, objectives and brass areas. It was quite a job to remove the spray paint and restore this but I’m really very pleased with it. The new paint is not perfect but it is much improved. The spray paint had been removed from the condenser iris and that is now moving smoothly and all in all it looks and functions very well. The knobs and brass areas had the spray paint removed and were relacquered with a rather lovely deep gold colour. My family are quite taken with it and they are usually somewhat immune to the charms of microscopes.

I just need to make a mirror for it, that’s on the to do list.

More progress on the Ross

I’m working my way up, almost everything is lacquered now but there are quite a few broken or missing screws that need replacing. These screws are not made to any standard I can find. Not completely surprising given the age of the microscope. Machinists often set their lathes up at x threads per inch and made everything at that pitch regardless of the size of the screw or what it was doing. Makes it a real pig to make new ones. Standardization is a blessing.

The stage is now lacquered – an odd thing to do but it was definitely lacquered originally. Just a few bits and bobs left. Not that this means it will be swift!

progress2

The Ross is coming together

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.

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Ross Wenham Prism

This Ross Wenham Prism microscope has come to me to be relacquered. It was actually a lot worse than it first appeared, the pitting is very deep and it  has taken hours and hours of work to get the microscope into a suitable state for lacquering. It isn’t finished yet but

I have got the first coat of lacquer on the legs. Pictures below show the before, the microscope taken apart and after the first coat of lacquer. I’m beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel with this one.