My "bread and butter" tissue preps are Pwax brains....often serial sections but not for stereology ( eg: mouse/chick/rat/zfish/monkey). I routinely, like many others, cut serial sections varying between 10 to 200 sections ( more, if reqd) They can be prone to "chatter"..... When this happens I either "hughf" on the tissue block as I'm cutting ( Ok, OK....H&S may have concerns): mouth comes close to the block and a gentle expiration of warm, moist air onto the block surface just before the actual cutting Works very well although, around the 20th section, a little breather is req ( so one "loses" a section every so often). Or.......I'll dampen a Kimwipe with 20% alcohol, squeeze until just moist, then before every section is cut, a firm but light forward and backward wipe on the block face. Both work very well ( H&S may prefer the latter, I prefer the former ;-). Actions have to be continuous: no jerkiness/stopping! Keep well away from soaking as the block will swell, losing you far more sections than the above methods. Others will have different suggestions; the above have worked well for 30+ yrs, and continue to do so.
Breathlessy, Carl Carl Hobbs Histology and Imaging Manager Wolfson CARD School of Biomedical Sciences Kings College London Guys Campus SE1 1UL Tel: 020 78486813 Fax: 020 78486816 020 78486813 _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet
