– The Empire of Dirt Workshop –
A Website Dedicated to the Olympus BH2 Microscope
This site is under intensive construction. New content is added every day.
Please be patient of the construction dust and check back often!
Click here to see the welcome section.
Click here to see the purpose of this site.
Click here learn about the Empire of Dirt Workshop.
Click here to learn about the history of the Empire of Dirt Workshop.
Click here to learn about the friends of the Empire of Dirt Workshop.
NEW! – BHT/U_LED Illuminator System for the Olympus BHT / BHTU Scopes
Click here to learn more about the BHT/U_LED Illuminator System.
Urea-Kojic-Iinositol, imaged with double polarization with 10x objective
(photo courtesy Del Totof of north of Quebec)
Click the image above to open the full-resolution image in a separate window.
Welcome to the Empire of Dirt Workshop!
This site is dedicated to the BH2 series of microscopes, which were manufactured and sold by Olympus in very large numbers from 1980 through about 1993. BH2 scopes are professional quality microscopes which were used extensively in research labs, veterinary clinics, doctors offices, and pathology labs. They are in a whole different league, in terms of build quality, expandability, and optical performance, than the low-cost scopes sold today for the amateur and educational markets.
Because of the large market share the BH2 enjoyed in its day, there are a great many BH2 scopes available on the used market at prices affordable to amateur microscopists. These scopes are several decades old now, so there is a good chance that any BH2 you buy will need a comprehensive service to return it to its original performance. However, if you purchase a BH2 and perform the necessary service (or have somebody else perform this service for you), you will be rewarded with a high-performance scope that absolutely eclipses the generic re-branded commodity microscopes manufactured and sold today. Click here to see an example of a BH2 working hard every day for oceanographic research.
Purpose of This Site
This purpose of this site is four-fold, as listed below.
- To educate amateur microscopists about the BH2, so that they can decide if a BH2 is right for them.
- To assist BH2 owners who wish to service and maintain their own microscopes.
- To provide those who do not feel comfortable tearing into their BH-2 a low-cost option for obtaining service for their scopes.
- To provide content relating to general microscopy, of interest to a broader audience, rather than just BH2 owners.
Many of the original Olympus brochures, operating manuals, and service manuals for the BH-2 scopes are available on this site in PDF form. Additionally, there is an extensive collection of PDFs and videos produced by the Empire of Dirt Workshop specifically addressing BH2 scopes available here. The quality of the Empire of Dirt Workshop PDFs are generally good, because I put real effort into their development. I mean like hundreds of hours. The videos? Let’s just say that these represent a different level of effort. These were shot quickly on an ancient Samsung S5 cellphone, without the benefit of studio lighting or even a real microphone, and put together with minimal editing. To be frank, the production values are bad, and that’s OK with me. My goal was to get the information out there for the small group of people who may benefit, and I think I succeeded in that. Just take them for what they are. That is to say me, working on BH2 microscopes, talking about what I’m doing with a camera pointed in the general direction. Although there is little to no production quality in these videos, I do believe they contain useful information.
About the Empire of Dirt Workshop
So now, a few words about the Empire of Dirt Workshop. First off, don’t fall for the hype. As you may have already figured out, the Empire of Dirt Workshop is kind of a “royal we” thing. In reality, it’s just me (Carl Hunsinger), alone in my dungeon of a basement workshop, with an ultrasonic cleaner, a few 3D printers, and YouTube on the wall TV for company. Just me doing what I love to do, while my wife and our two dogs, Wally and Lokai, wonder what the heck I’m doing in this hell-hole. Actually, I take that back. Susan may wonder, but Wally and Lokai don’t really care, so long as they get to come down now and again for “basement treats”. The place totally creeps Lokai out, but nonetheless, he powers through for an occasional Milk Bone or two. Believe me when I tell you that if you saw the cramped, cluttered shop, you would totally understand the “Empire of Dirt” name. “We”, at the Empire of Dirt Workshop, do not take “ourselves” too seriously.
The History of the Empire of Dirt Workshop
So why am I doing this, you may wonder? When I got my first BH2 (click here to see the story of that “Alpha” purchase), I looked around for information regarding the BH2. I quickly found Alan Wood’s site, which was chock-full of PDF scans of various bits of Olympus literature and lots of other valuable information. Sites like his are clearly a labor of love, and I didn’t realize at the time that nothing like this existed for scopes made by other manufacturers. I remember being frustrated that I could not find a theory of operation for the electronics in the BHT/BHTU, or any videos showing any sorts of repairs. The partial scan of the Olympus repair manual I was able to find on Alan’s site just kind of omitted any real discussion of the electronics, save for a postage-sized BHT/BHTU schematic (which I later found out contained two separate errors).
I partitioned off a part of the basement for my new microscope hobby, equipping it with an ancient SteelCase tanker desk I found for free on Craigslist, a Craftsman workbench I stole out from under the radial arm saw in the garage, and the set of kitchen cabinets leftover from a recent kitchen remodel. I eventually threw in a few steel shelves I bought as surplus from my employer, along with a couple of metal lockers and a Craftsman toolbox stack. Oh, and I painted the cabinets red to match the Craftsman stack. It’s a very small area, and because of that, not a cubic inch of space can be wasted. It truly is the Empire of Dirt Workshop.
I quickly became obsessed with the fact that my “new” scope had been utterly abandoned by Olympus, and if I was going to ever need parts or service for this thing, I was probably on my own. I decided I should get a few spares on hand, for parts, while they could be found. I purchased a bare BHTU stand from eBay, which was listed as “defective focus, for parts only” for a very good price. My plan was that this scope could be cannibalized for whatever parts were still good, at such time as they were needed, to try to keep my beloved “Alpha” going. The scope showed up and I eagerly unpacked it and placed it on the table, totally not anticipating the reaction I would have upon seeing this scope for the first time. Neuronal action potentials fired and propagated hither and yon until something irrevocably clicked in my brain, changing me forever. I knew at that instant that I could never disassemble this scope (which was in better cosmetic condition than “Alpha”), and that it was my destiny to repair this thing, one way or another.
After procrastinating for days out of fear as to how to proceed, I slowly and carefully began disassembling this new scope, to determine the cause of the grinding that I could feel and hear whenever I turned the fine focus knob. I remember being terrified that I would permanently mess something up, or not remember how it all goes back together, but I felt that I had no choice. I proceeded ever so slowly, taking copious notes and photos of every step, and bagging and tagging every part that I removed, until finding a little white gear in the fine focus knob on the right side that was broken to pieces. The other gears in the area seemed to be intact. Could this be all it needs?
I then found myself on the phone with Olympus, talking to a tired customer service representative who has no doubt heard my plight a thousand times. He patiently explained that “the AA782600 gear is no longer available.” I told him that I knew that would be the case before I called, but “you know I had to try, right?” He went on to explain that he gets calls like mine all the time, and hates to have to tell the callers that their BH2 is no longer supported. He told me my best bet for finding the part was to contact a field service repairman who repairs Olympus scopes, and see if they might have this part. He gave me contact information for a company called Clear Focus Microscope Services and Sales, in the St. Louis area.
Next thing you know, I’m on the phone talking to the Clear Focus answering machine, explaining who I am and what I am looking for. Less than 30 seconds after I hung up, the phone rang, with “Clear Focus” displaying on the Caller ID! I explained that I had a BH2 scope with a broken gear, and couldn’t get one from Olympus. Paul, the owner to whom I was speaking with, told me he could send me a replacement gear for $5, plus shipping. “What, that’s it? $5?” Clearly, Paul was doing this to help me out and would not be making any money off of this sale! At that point, I decided to press my luck. “Do you have two, by any chance?” A few days later, I had two AA7826 gears in my hand and a smile on my face, and Paul had seven bucks. I didn’t know much about the ins and outs of the BH2 focus mechanism back then, so I just replaced the broken gear and put the scope back together. I didn’t tear into it any further, for fear of making things worse. But the “for parts” eBay scope was now working! At this point, I dubbed my original scope “Alpha”, and the newly repaired one “Phoenix”. I was completely hooked!
Ignorance and self doubts aside, as an electrical engineer I felt qualified to dig into the electronics and reverse-engineer the circuitry of the BH2, so that is exactly what i did. I took the electrical base out of “Phoenix”, sat down cross-legged on the living room floor, at the coffee table, with a big old glass of Diet Coke, a digital multimeter, and a pad of paper, and worked on the task at hand while my wife watched “Say Yes to the Dress”. Eventually, I had a good understanding of the circuitry, complete with hand-drawn schematic and computer simulations showing the operation. I decided to go one step further and write it all up in PDF format and release it. Alan Wood even put it up on his website. I couldn’t find anything like this when I needed it, but because of my efforts, the next guy should not have this same problem. It felt good. It was a small contribution, to be sure, but a contribution nonetheless. I later decided to expand on the original PDF, and have since released quite a few more PDFs, each covering a specific section or component of the BH2 microscope (see the section below discussing “Jerry” for an explanation of this). I eventually added a YouTube channel, due to the many requests I got for BH2 videos.
My most recent activities have been centered around putting together the website you’re viewing right now. I envision this site to be a place where amateur microscopists can learn about general microscopy theory, with a focus on Olympus BH2 microscopes. The plan is for this to become a one-stop shopping site for anybody looking for my PDFs and videos, scans of original Olympus literature, general BH2 information, and parts, accessories, or repairs for their BH2 scope. Basically, the goal of this site is to cover all things “BH2”.
Friends of the Empire of Dirt Workshop
There were several people who helped me get to the point where I’m at in my hobby today (that is to say, there are several people who can rightfully be blamed for the depths of my current BH2 obsession). Starting way back with the felonious dentist (click here to learn about that story), and going up to the present day, these people are the reason I have 35+ BH2 stands strewn about the place. And 45 binocular heads in the cabinet above my 3D printer. And the 3D printer. And the other 3D printer. And the file cabinet chock-full of BHT/BHTU electrical bases and other parts. And the wall locker with stages and substages. I won’t mention the cabinet full of objective lenses, eyepieces, and condensers, because that part makes the whole thing sound pretty bad. These people are the reason I spend my weekends hunched over a keyboard, or at the workbench repairing scopes, or building LED illuminators, or shooting very low-quality YouTube videos. Given such influences, a guy can hardly be blamed for the outcome.
Jerry
One night I was looking through eBay listings for BH2 stuff I could not live without, as I did every night, and saw a listing for a pile of new dimmer boards for the BHT/BHTU. They were clearly new boards, but they looked different from any of the dimmer boards I had ever seen, so I contacted the seller to see if I could find out if he had gotten these from Olympus, or from a third party supplier. I’m sure I came across as really weird, maybe even a bit stalker-like to him, and he was hesitant to say very much for fear of running afoul of the terms of the eBay seller’s agreement. But I was able to get him to correspond with me off eBay, via email. His name was Jerry, and it turned out he was a microscope field service repairman in Madison, Wisconsin, with 50 years of Olympus experience. Jerry made no bones about it, telling me that the BH2 was the “best damned microscope Olympus ever made.” We corresponded back and forth a lot by email. Jerry had a small lathe and milling machine in his basement shop, and he made/modified me a few parts that were not otherwise available. Jerry sent lots of text and photos to help me learn to tear down and reassemble the BH2, and even at one point sent an entire BH2 focus mechanism “for practice”. Jerry was a diehard Plastilube grease man, going back to his early days working on American Optical scopes and AO 820 “brain slicers” (microtomes). I used what he taught me, and one component at a time, Phoenix once again became the silky-smooth machine it was engineered to be, thanks to Jerry’s help. Jerry encouraged me to use my writing skills to write up what I had learned from him, and to make it available to whomever wants it, “like you did with the electronics”. A year or so later, Jerry retired and decided he wanted to use his shop for something other than microscopes. He eventually sent me just about everything he had in his shop that was Olympus-related, one FedEx box at a time. I had to smile when I found a hastily written note in one of the last boxes he sent me that said “maybe someday you’ll find a younger guy to send all this stuff to, like I did.” I received a lot of FedEx boxes from Madison, and I really miss the days of coming home from work and hearing my wife say “you got two boxes from Jerry”. Thanks Jerry!
Paul
All the while this was going on with Jerry, I kept in touch with Paul of Clear Focus Microscope Services and Sales. Paul would occasionally come into the Kansas City area for a service call, and when he did, he would work very long hours servicing microscopes for the customers who called him. After he finished his long days of work, we would meet up in the Bass Pro Shop parking lot, where he would sell me BH2 stuff out of the trunk of his car at insanely low prices. Nothing feels more down and dirty than buying microscope stuff out of a guy’s trunk, under the ghastly mercury-vapor lighting of a deserted parking lot. We did this several times. One day he emailed me and said he had a lot of BH2 stuff he wanted to sell “fast”. He gave me an extensive list of what he had, and offered to deliver it to my door if I wanted it. “Make me an offer”, he said. Something seemed very different this time. There was an awful lot of really good stuff on that list, and I knew that I couldn’t afford it. I told him I didn’t have enough cash in my scope fund to buy all of it, and he said “you might be surprised.” So I offered $2000. “OK”, he immediately replied, and we set up a time for the deal to go down. A few days later, Paul’s large SUV was in my driveway, full of BH2 scopes, apochromatic objectives, and all things BH2-related. He told me as we were unloading boxes and placing them on the garage floor that he had received some really bad medical news, and was not expected to be alive for much longer. He went on to say that he wanted to get rid of all this stuff so his family wouldn’t have to deal with it later. I would have never guessed this at the time, since Paul looked healthy enough to me. I didn’t pry, and he didn’t volunteer any more information. Just a few weeks later, I got a text from a relative of Paul who found me as a business contact on Paul’s phone, telling me that Paul had unexpectedly passed away. Wow, that was fast, and a real gut punch. Rest in peace, Paul.
Joe
I once got an email from somebody who had just received a BHT scope from a family member, saying my name came up in a Google search when he was researching the scope. He wanted to know if I’d be interested in buying the scope, or maybe overhauling it, so he could sell it on eBay. I wrote him a nice long reply, declining to do the overhaul, but explaining what he could expect it to fetch on eBay, and a warning on shipping BH2 scopes. I guess he didn’t like my response, because he never even acknowledged my reply to his email. I later saw that same scope listed on eBay. A week or so after that I saw a post on an Olympus Microscope Users Group on Facebook from a severely frustrated guy who had just received a scope he bought on eBay that had been damaged in shipping. I immediately recognized it as the same scope that this guy tried to sell me a few weeks back! The buyer posted photos of obvious damage the seller should have disclosed up-front, and also posted photos showing that the plastic gear in the fine-focus knob was shattered, just like I told the seller would happen if he didn’t remove the stage and substage when he shipped it. The seller ended up issuing a refund to the buyer to make good on a messed-up situation, but this whole fiasco could have been avoided. I tried to tell him. I contacted the guy who had bought the scope (Joe was his name) and told him the whole story of his scope. We chatted quite a it back and forth, and Joe eventually became a really good friend. One day Joe bought a 3D printer (an Ender 3 Max) and quickly convinced me that I needed one too. So, I bought myself an Ender 3 Max. I am thankful for Joe’s encouragement. I still have that printer and even use it occasionally, but by and large it’s been replaced by the much faster K1 Max. But had I not bought that printer, I never would have made the BH2-DFR Darkfield/Rheinberg Accessory Kit or the BH2-OBL Oblique Accessory Kit for the BH2. Or for that matter the BHT/U_LED Illuminator for the BHT/BHTU. Joe helped with the beta testing of the LED project, and in fact identified a serious compatibility issue I did not know about, that lead to a major redesign. Joe has contributed review comments, feedback, BH2 information, and photos that have contributed to making this website a reality. He also has the dubious distinction of having the absolute worst BH2 horror story I have ever heard (click here to see the gory details). Joe, I have fond memories of the early BH2 days, and doing the Sandusky Shuffle for PayPal purchases. Thanks for being a good friend. And this whole microscope thing? Totally not my fault!