Jim,
We have had the same problen.  We develope on glass rods over a waterbath
also.  Another thing that helps is to limit the air flow over around the
waterbath .We have tried some creative things like standing slide folders
around the waterbath and covering the whole thing with a towel.  Sounds
pretty crazy but it helps the slides to develope evenly.  In the special
stains area of histotechnology -whatever works is the best method.
(Iloved your comments about spelling.  Bad spellers of the world untie!)
Jan Mahoney
Omaha, NE
At 04:44 PM 3/18/99 -0500, Jeff Silverman wrote:
>Jim, 
>You might try developing the sections on glass rods and flooding the slide
>with the freshly prepared developer. Since the gelatin solidifies on my
>slides during development, I would imagine that you end up with a Jello
>pudding pop in your staining jar. Maybe decreased access to light rays in
>the slides toward the center of your staining vessel is causing the uneven
>staining results. 
>
>Jeff Silverman 
>Southampton Hospital NY USA
>peptolab@hamptons.com
>
>----------
>> From: Jim Ball <xryhisto@ovis.net>
>> To: histonet@Pathology.swmed.edu
>> Subject: warthin-starry
>> Date: Thursday, March 18, 1999 4:16 PM
>> 
>> was wondering if I might be able to pick up some pointers on what I refer
>to
>> as worthless-starry procedure. I have no problem staining the organism,
>but
>> find the over all staining of the tissue as being my back ground stain(
>the
>> actual gold to brown counter stain imparted by the sliver) to be less
>than
>> desirable. I ran 5 positive control slides today and developed them for
>the
>> same length of time in a glass coplin jar.
>> the color contrast ran the gamit from 1 slide staining perfectly to 2
>slides
>> being marginaly acceptable to 2 slides being total worthless(hinse my pet
>> name for the stain). I have found the imprenation step  to be the most
>> improtant to maintaining the organisms distintive shape.
>>          I guess the thing that concens me the most is that the mucus
>> producing areas of the biopsy seems to get overly dark and may cause
>false
>> negative results since in cases where there are only a few organisms
>present
>> these dark staining areas could mask the organism, and cause a false
>> negative report to be generated.
>>          Please foward all formulas for cleaning glass ware as this may
>be
>> the problem and many of my fellow techs seem to think that rinsing the
>glass
>> ware in several changes of DI will cure all. I am of the opinion that
>> disposable plastic is the way to go. My best results were obtained using
>the
>> plastic disposable urine containers and Plastic slide mailers. The slide
>> mailers were used only one time and then recyled as what other than slide
>> mailers after being thourghly disenfected.
>>           After writing this I may have come up with something else to
>try,
>> god it helps to pour out your heart to a caring audiance, if only you
>could
>> despense a drink over the net what great bartenders we would make. Hope I
>> have made enough speeling errors for all the speelin bee weenies out
>there
>> In the words of that great actor" frankly Scarlet I don,t give a damn."
>The
>> day has been way to long and I need that dink I was talking about
>earlier.
>> 
>
>