I've used a similar technique for many types of tissues, but instead of
putting the alcohol on a slide as Peggy describes we used a 30 or 60 slide
staining dish and filled it with the alcohol. Ribbons could then be floated
onto the alcohol, picked up on a slide either as single sections or shorter
ribbons and transferred to your regular waterbath. This made collection of
serial sections easier for us. If you choose to transfer a ribbon of
sections from the alcohol to water, be sure you slowly float the sections
off the slide onto the water. If you do this too quickly the sections will
be torn apart. Also make sure you don't allow the sections coming from the
alcohol to dry on the slide before transfer or they won't float off the
slide and onto the waterbath. I've also found this method a great way to
teach new students. It helps get them over that initial frustration that
occurs when they've cut a great ribbon only to see it ruined by a poor
transfer to the waterbath. By using this technique for a while they gain
confidence and soon only use the alcohol bath for difficult tissues such as
cartilage.

John Tarpley 15-2-B
Specialist Image Analysis & Immunohistochemistry
Amgen Inc
One Amgen Center Drive
Thousand Oaks, CA  91320

Views expressed are mine alone and do not represent the views of my employer
> ----------
> From: 	lpwenk@netquest.com[SMTP:lpwenk@netquest.com]
> Sent: 	Wednesday, November 04, 1998 2:58 AM
> To: 	NTT@shcc.org
> Cc: 	histonet@Pathology.swmed.edu
> Subject: 	Re: cartilage
>
	--Snip Snip--

> (I know the following works for paraffin. Have never tried it with FS.)
>
> Have you ever tried floating the tissue out on 25% alcohol, then
> transferring it to the flotation bath?
>
> We take a blank slide (frosted end ones OK), lay it flat on
> the counter, and flood it from a squirt bottle with 25% alcohol.
>
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