Thread: Question regarding C-MON Special Microtome

My pleasure, let us know how it works out when all is said and done.

About the bevel on the back side of a microtome.

A microtome with a bevel on the backside is used to set a cutting height for controlled slide preparation.
With a flat backed (chisel) microtome you slice from the top layer to the bottom layer eye balling your thickness.
With a bevel backed (precision) microtome you slice from the bottom layer to the top layer getting layers that are as thick as the bottom bevel rise from the flat bottom.

Originally Posted by criswilson10

About the bevel on the back side of a microtome.

A microtome with a bevel on the backside is used to set a cutting height for controlled slide preparation.
With a flat backed (chisel) microtome you slice from the top layer to the bottom layer eye balling your thickness.
With a bevel backed (precision) microtome you slice from the bottom layer to the top layer getting layers that are as thick as the bottom bevel rise from the flat bottom.

That makes sense. Thank you for this valuable historic information. Regarding slide making for histopathology analysis, I will continue to use the rotary microtome (at least the technicians will) rather than this knife. All I really care about is the ability to shave with it. But clearly I appreciate the accurate back story on this tool as I was clearly confused as to why there were chisel ground and double beveled knives of apparently the same basic hollow/wedge ground configurations. The story I got for this item was that it was essentially NOS, but it had been displayed over the past decades. There are a few dings in the bevel that were probably obtained through handling, but I could not understand why JimmyHAD's example was chisel ground and this one had the double bevel. It is completely plausible that makers of microtome knives made them in both configurations, and it is also plausible that the subject knife was in fact NOS with a factory double bevel. This will certainly add to the back story of this unique item.