Hi--

>According to the Nikon chart I've seen, their 1.4x's do not work with the
>105mm micro. Is that a misprint?

I find that list technically correct (though often too conservative,
as here), but totally uninformative about whether or not a combination
is useful and/or sharp - absurd combos are OK'd, and useful ones are
no-no'd... When shooting bugs (samples on my web page), I rarely
didn't use converters, since they give you "free" magnification
(no optical losses at f11 or so, and it seems like diffraction is
less of a problem, if that is possible...). Go try it...! ;-)

>>>>- How can I improve my working distance with the 105mm micro?

>>>You can add a 1.4X or 2X converter to the 105 with good
>>>results if you stop down to around f8-11. This will
>>>increase the working distance for a given magnification,
>>>and will increase the maximum possible magnification,
>>>with very little image quality loss (assuming you
>>>use Nikkor converters...;-).