For many years I routinely did serial sections of paraplast embedded renal
biopsies with an old American Optical rotary microtome set at .5 micron. I
suggest that the resulting sections were between 1 and 2 micron. The only
trick I used was to have the block very cold and prior to sectioning I would
freeze the metal knife on dry ice. This allowed consistently flat, very thin
sections which are needed in renal pathology to enable detection of small
immune complex deposits on the glomerular basement membrane usually using a
silver methenamine/Masson trichrome stain. You don't need to plastic embed
especially if you want to do immuno's on the same tissue. Hope this helps ,
Ian Birchall, Melbourne.