How large are your blocks? If they contain implants, it sounds as if they
could be quite large, but Spurr's epoxy resin (I assume this is what you
mean) is usually used for blocks about 1mm cubed at most. You can do larger
blocks, but only by increasing the times and repetitions of all the
processing steps dramatically and using some kind of rotator, vacuum, and
any other tricks you might think of to force the materials into the tissue.
A lot of people use propylene oxide between the last alcohol and the first
resin, but I generally use graded mixes of alcohol/epoxy. I haven't heard of
anyone using xylene in this context. Hope this helps.

 If you mean a different resin, then ignore everything I've said!

Lesley Weston.



on 24/06/2004 1:31 PM, Marks, Angela at Angela.Marks@bsci.com wrote:

> Does anyone have any suggestions on working with SPURR?  We are trying to
> embed animal vessels with implants.  The block is polymerizing nicely but
> the tissue is gooey.  I've tried a variety of different dehydration
> procedures (ethanol, acetone, xylene, amyl alcohol) and infiltration
> gradients.  
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