Re: How to permanent mount crystals?

In article <42b04a3b$0$7847$e4fe514c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Peter wrote:
> I saw perfect 19th century slides with crystals, but how were they mounted?
>
Were they mounts of water-soluble crystals? or "micromounts" of
mineralogical specimens (which may or may not be water-soluble)? Whatever.
It is moderately common in the micro-mount mineral world to mount
specimens in "well slides". These are essentially a normal slide (1.5mm
approx thick, with a second slide with a circular hole glued on top, forming
a shallow cylindrical well. Then you *very* carefully glue your specimen into
the well and put a cover slip over the top. Yes, it's not easy. No, there is
not a "universal" glue.

You may find more hints from old volumes on goniometry, when one had
to mount your crystal specimen on a multi-axis stage to determine it's
inter-facial angles and optical figure. But that's something you'll need to
go to old books for, I suspect, because it's a lot easier to do the
measurements by XRD from powder than to grow the crystals.

--
Aidan Karley,
Aberdeen, Scotland,
Location: +57°10' , -02°09' (sub-tropical Aberdeen), 0.021233
Written at Wed, 15 Jun 2005 19:38 +0100

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