For our slides we use an art pencil made by Sanford called Prismacolor.  The
color we chose is indigo blue.  It stays on nicely through all the staining
solutions.  However, we do use the shurmark for our immuno stains because
the target retrieval seems to take off most anything.   Sheila


-----Original Message-----
From: Tracy Bergeron [mailto:TBergeron@criver.com]
Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 9:01 AM
To: histonet@PATHOLOGY.SWMED.EDU
Subject: Marking pens Thank you....



Hi Folks,

     Thanks for all your responses on marking pens.   What I neglected to
mention is that we are currently using the Shur/mark pens.   We have not
had too luck with them.  I have found we go through way to many of them,
mainly due to the tip getting trashed.   I honestly think that the reason
we go through so many is that our slides are very rough, which wears away
the pen tip very quickly.   I have recently tried using pencil on the
slides (which is how I have always labeled slides before this job),
unfortunately the roughness of the slides again has caused a problem.  The
pencil did not stay on well, and rubbed almost completely off during
coverslipping..    I was using a type of mechanical #2 pencil I have used
before with no problems...

     I would love to try different brands of slides, but currently changing
slides is not an option...  sigh..

     I have totaled the responses I got just in case anyone was interested:

          Shur/Mark : 4
          Secureline: 8
          Pencil: 2

     Thanks again I appreciate the info.


Tracy E. Bergeron
Histologist
Charles River Laboratories
Wilmington, MA
978-658-6000
x-1229