You wrote:
If there is anyone out there who does silver stains in large batches I need your input. I haven't done a Sevier-Munger stain in probably 20 years and when I did this kind of stain I usually had 2-3 slides to stain. So now I have a request to do this stain and I have multiple racks of slides. What is the best way to handle the ammoniacal silver step - each slide individually or plunk a whole rack of slides into a staining dish? And if I do the latter, can I multiply the amounts by 5 to make 250 ml. of the ammoniacal silver solution which is the amount needed to fill the staining dish? Thanks Andi ********************** Andi, I did Steiner and Steiner Helicobacter staining in huge batches, 20 slides per rack to control the timing better. I used glass staining dishes (metal is unacceptable for silver stains) and crisscrossed the slides so they were not back to back. Criss crossing slides avoids trapped reagents that cause nasty carryover. I had a positive control in EACH rack to monitor the silver deposition for that rack of slides. I monitored with a microscope and you may need to do this too. It took a bit of careful planning and with heated solutions for Steiner another dimension of difficulty. I locked doors and didn't answer telephones. The staining worked beautifully, and I could do 60 or more slides a day. Mass production is possible and if it was me doing this, there is no way I would do 2 to 3 slides at a time. It would be a nightmare workday, maybe an "all nighter" in the lab! Good luck Gayle M. Callis HTL(ASCP)HT,MT Bozeman MT 59715 _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet