I have been a firm believer that dry tissue can be caused by to much xylene
in the first wax after the clearing process as much as over dehydration. I
have found that the least aount of time the tissue spends in this station
the better. I have tried to keep the over all exposure to 15 to 20 minutes.
Our department has gone with a cheaper variant of paraffin and the
brittleness of the tissue has increased considerable. My question is, How
often do you in histo cyber space change this wax. When we were getting a
good quality wax I was replacing half of this station with half the station
that followed in the process after about ever 350 to 400 blocks. This worked
out to be about every third day the waxes would be rotated even if we had
not reached 400 blocks there seemed to be enough carry over to justify this
rule of thumb.
          I have always thought that the fresher the wax the more insulating
properties it had as xylene was introduced, but eventually this insulating
property was lost and the 60 plus degrees helped this station to act as a
french frying unit, This effect was multipled if xylene was allowed to build
up in the next station and the next station. Would like to hear other
peoples view on this subject. Oh yea we are using the VIP processor so each
processor may allow for more or less blocks in my simple equation, and as
the old saying goes " Hit me with your best shot "