Dear Jill

We have for a long time, (since an unfortunate accident with a glass 
syringe) used 3ml plastic Pasteur pipettes as "droppers" for mounting media.
They have the advantage of being relatively inexpensive,  require no 
cleaning (dispose of once the mounting is done) and that the droplet size 
can be adjusted by judicious trimming of the end.  They can - clean ones I 
mean - also double up as little chemical scoops if the bulb end is cut off 
horizontally

I have no idea, though, whether this syetm would be acceptable by cautious 
USA standards.

Louise
BRU, MRC
Johannesburg
South Africa

>From: "J. A. Kiernan" 
>To: jill cox 
>CC: histonet@pathology.swmed.edu
>Subject: Unduly long (Re: Mounting medium jars)
>Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 01:35:12 -0500
>
>I've never owned a balsam bottle of my own, but have used
>them, and never liked them.  It was easier and less
>messy to make blunt-ended glass rods and dip them
>into the bottle of mountant. When not in use, the
>glass rod rested in the last (pre-coverslip) tank of
>xylene. This was good because (a) the end of the rod
>was always clean - didn't get bigger with accumulated
>goo, and (b) the small amount of mountant dissolved in
>the last tank of xylene increased its sensitivity to
>carried-over alcohol, indicated by opalescence. Then
>and now, you don't mount from cloudy xylene.
>
>Since abandoning glass rods (see below), I've probably
>seen more slides with obvious contamination of the mountant
>with alcohol. There always were plenty of these because
>students didn't look critically at their slides until they
>needed high quality photos to put in their theses.
>Nevertheless, I have a feeling in my urine that the
>future of manual coverslipping is not with either the
>lab-forged glass rod or the commercial balsam bottle,
>but with the squeeze-controlled medium dispenser.
>
>My advice is therefore:
>If you can't find just a few balsam bottles,
>consider buying a mountant that comes in a
>plastic bottle that you invert and squeeze.
>
>I discovered these a few years ago, and since
>then I've hardly touched a glass rod. The medium
>I use is called Cytoseal; it's in the Fisher
>Scientific catalogue, and the label indicates
>that the main ingredient is poly(methylmethacrylate).
>It doesn't behave quite as nicely as Entellan, a
>much more expensive poly(methylmethacrylate)
>mountant that needs glass rodding, but it's OK.
>
>Unless you make your own DPX it's necessary to live
>with some trade secrecy with synthetic resinous
>mounting media. Probably there are mountants other
>than Cytoseal that come pre-packaged in ready-to-use
>modular combined storage and application units.
>
>Even 10-thumbed new graduate students (who call it
>glue) quickly learn to apply the right amount of
>mountant from a squeezy bottle without getting it
>all over the place and sticking slides permanently
>onto benches and hotplates. (The name glue came from
>this unwanted action of mounting medium that dripped
>unseen from the ends of the glass rods.)
>
>This doesn't answer your question, but it might help.
>--
>-------------------------
>John A. Kiernan
>Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology
>The University of Western Ontario
>London,   Canada   N6A 5C1
>    kiernan@uwo.ca
>    http://publish.uwo.ca/~jkiernan/
>_____________________________________________________
>jill cox wrote:
> >
> >   Hello everyone,
> >       I have been looking for the mounting medium jars
> > for coverslipping and cant find anything except one
> > brand where you have to order a case at a time. They
> > are too expensive that way. Does anyone know where I
> > can get 2 to 3 of them? Thanks in advance
> >
> > =====
> > Jill Cox HT (ASCP)
> > Seattle Histology Lab
>
>Is there only one histology lab in Seattle?
>_____________________________________________________
>

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