Insect - double mounting

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NikonUser
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Location: southern New Brunswick, Canada

Insect - double mounting

Post by NikonUser »

One way to hold and orientate a bug for photography is a two-pin method.
Bug is stuck to a fine insect pin (the best insect pins have a nylon head, see image. To make this 'headless' simply burn it off with a small flame (match or lighter)). Mount bug on this pin with Bondic.
This pin with mounted bug is passed through a cube of foam which is supported on a thicker insect pin.
The insect can be easily orientated by rotating its pin.
The ventral view of the ant (New York Carpenter Ant) is a mount of a 2nd individual with legs extended to show Bondic (in the 1st ant the legs hid the attachment point). Pin diam= 0.28 mm.
Attachments
stack 1 ant Bondic.jpg
stack 2.jpg
stack 3.jpg
NU.
student of entomology
Quote – Holmes on ‘Entomology’
” I suppose you are an entomologist ? “
” Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name.
No man can be truly called an entomologist,
sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
The Poet at the Breakfast Table.

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Olympus microscope and objectives

MarkSturtevant
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Re: Insect - double mounting

Post by MarkSturtevant »

Very good. I expect you know about minutien pins for the smaller pin in these kinds of mounts (one is next to the dime): https://www.fishersci.com/shop/products ... /NC9677548
Its safest to keep these tiny needles with a magnet to keep them in place. Drop one, and its hard to find!
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

BugEZ
Posts: 850
Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2011 7:15 pm
Location: Loves Park Illinois

Re: Insect - double mounting

Post by BugEZ »

NikonUser,

What adhesive (bug to pin) have you used here? I started out using super glue (Cyanoacrylate or “CA”) then switched to black nail polish as super glue outgassing can leave a haze on the bug or optics. Your adhesive looks nice and clean. My black nail polish occasionally looks messy.

Keith

Edit: NikonUser’s post on insect mounting answers the question, UV cured adhesive. Happily I use UV cured lacquer to finish the ukuleles I build so I have plenty of raw material at hand!

JKT
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Re: Insect - double mounting

Post by JKT »

MarkSturtevant wrote:
Sat Jul 10, 2021 8:44 pm
Drop one, and its hard to find!
I have found them disgustingly easy to find ... with my feet. ](*,)

Beatsy
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Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Re: Insect - double mounting

Post by Beatsy »

That's a neat trick for extra freedom to position the specimen.

I already have ways to tilt, rotate and shift the specimen on the rig, so although I do much the same, I generally just bend the end of the main pin/wire at 90 degrees before or after mounting the specimen.

I used to try and impale specimens on pins but quickly learned gluing is better. Seems everyone is drifting that way now. Which also brings into question the point (haha) of using very expensive ent pins in the first place. I have quite a bit of spare tungsten wire left over from tungsten needle experimentation (the gauges that didn't work so well for making fine tungsten points). Since I no longer need an actual point on the "pin", I just use short lengths of that wire. It's trivially easy to sharpen the ends to wicked points by electrolysis, if needed, but I rarely do for mounting stuff. About 0.5mm tungsten wire works well. Thin but very rigid. I'm sure any other wire would work equally well, providing it's not too "twangy" such that it vibrates too much. I just happen to have quite a lot of tungsten wire "going spare", which is the ideal material IMO.

A variation for tiny black dot specimens: I've had some success mounting very small insects, less than 1mm, directly on the surface of thin strips of coverslip. Obviously you lose the view from one side (glued against glass), but the other is clear and free from any visible support. For pollen beetles, aphids, even up to ant-sized critters etc, I simply use multiple specimens mounted in different orientations if I want to capture multiple viewpoints. Works well for little bits of minerals etc too. The fragility of a 75mm x 5mm x 0.17mm cut strip of glass is a downside - I lost a couple of those mounts to clumsy shader adjustments early on. Super-slow and careful does it now...

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