Hi, do folks out there know what a hockey stick is? With modern techniques,
charged slides, etc, I doubt if they are used. Just in case, what you do is
melt a glass rod ( or glass pasteur) in a bunsen flame and produce a curve at
the end, resembling the old fashioned style of hockey stick, more like a
backwards L than a modern style Indian hockey stick. Your safety regulations
may require that you get a glass blower to make them for you.
Margaret
Unilever research
Beds
UK

-----Original Message-----
From:	Hedley David Glencross [SMTP:hedley@hheath.demon.co.uk]
Sent:	Monday, June 07, 1999 6:39 PM
To:	histonet@pathology.swmed.edu
Subject:	celloidin sections

Hi everyone

It seems there are no "oldies" out there who have used this method, so
I'll give the one we used to use.

Unfortunately celloidin sections need to be stained by a free floating
method, tranfering them from pots of stain using glass hockey sticks.
The trickiest part is to get them on to slides. We achieved this by
placing the stained section on a slide, and then smoothing it out  with
the aforementioned hockey stick. This was then further smoothed, by the
use of shiny toilet tissue soked in CAX (chloroform/alcohol/xylene in
equal parts) (in the days before risk assessments!), and a paint brush.
When this section was smooth enough, it was mounted in Canada balsam.
Finally the coverslip was weighted down with a lead weight, to stop the
section wrinkling again until the CB was dry (ish!).

Labourious I know. Thank goodness I no longer do celloidin work!

There must be a better way.

Regards

-- 
Hedley David Glencross