I assume that you are talking about "chatter" or "venetian blinds" in the
tissue. If everything seems tight, a subtle problem that can cause this
is a buildup of wax in either the knife holder or the block holder. Then
instead of gripping the cassette or knife with metal, you are actually
gripping it with a piece of wax,and this allows more movement.
	If it's only a couple of particular blocks, then melt them down and
reembed them. You may have an invisible fault line either separating the
block from the cassette (maybe formed when you popped it out of the mold)
or even a little fault all the way around the tissue itself, caused by
not allowing the tissue to warm up sufficiently  in the molten paraffin
in the mold. This causes more problems with very thin embedments, (which
is what my lab mostly does). Either one will again allow more vibration
to occur.
	If all else fails then soak more and cut slowly so the knife won't
vibrate so much.
	It goes without saying, of course, that MY lab never has had such
problems. We just, um, know of people who have.  

Jeffrey Crews, HTL (ASCP)
Organogenesis, Inc.


On Tue, 15 Feb 2000 09:27:06 -0500 Sharon E Willman
<sharon.willman@bms.com> writes:
>I was wondering if anyone had problems with lines in the sections
>using the Leica R M 2155 microtomes.  The sections look as if
>something is loose on the microtome, but everything seems to be
>tight.  Any help would be appreciated.
>
>

________________________________________________________________
YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET!
Juno now offers FREE Internet Access!
Try it today - there's no risk!  For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.