Baker Series IV fine focus reconstruction
Hello chaps,
The Baker series IV is now returned to its former glory, almost. The fine focus was broken because a small pin had sheared off. To fix it you will need a lathe, or a friend with a lathe, patience, grease and some small tools.
First, remove the old broken pin. It’s a tight fit so you may have to bash it out with a hammer. Next, ask your friend, who has a watchmaker’s lathe, to make you a new pin for the fine focus mechanism.
Broken Baker pin
Next, insert the new pin where the old pin used to be, It can be seen just to the right of the screw head in the black, central region.
Hang the widget on the pin and grease the tracks for the ball bearings. Stick the ball bearings in position.
Widget hanging on pin, ball bearings
Now you must make sure that the notch in the widget will take the little square nubble on its opposite piece (I hope you’re enjoying the technical terms). This is very important, if the nubble isn’t sitting on the notch then the fine focus will not work, the fine focus relies on pressure from the stage carrier as well as the action of the spring at the bottom to return.
Attempt to put the two pieces together. You will find that half of the ballbearings pop out and your hands will be covered with grease (and cat hair if you live in our house). Make sure the cat hair doesn’t end up inside the fine focus mechanism, it won’t do it any good. If your Baker Series IV has a cage to keep the ball bearings contained and aligned sing “Hallelujah!” because it will all be much easier to put back together.
If your ball bearings pop out, here’s a video of my wonderful husband showing you how to pop them back in.
Now you can put the spring back, put on the top and bottom plates and reassemble the microscope.
The next picture shows the base plate which contains the spring and allows the fine focus mechanism to return.
And here she is, the fixed microscope. I’m still not completely happy with the paint work but at least she works now.
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