[Histonet] Novice needs help with vacuum infiltration

[Joe Amateur]

Hi all,
I'm a very green, extremely inexperienced novice that has been kind of 
thrust into learning histology by chance. It's fascinating stuff and I'm 
eager to learn, but the only training I've been given is two textbooks and 
the Internet. Thus I need help.

We're hand-processing soft (vascular) tissue for H&E in paraffin. We've got 
a vacuum infiltrator, but no idea how to incorporate it in our protocols 
(currently using 3 separate baths of molten paraffin at atmospheric pressure 
at 1 hour each). We know that the infiltration time under vacuum is shorter, 
but can anyone advise what would work best? Could we put the samples in the 
infiltrator directly out of xylene, or should we incubate the samples in 
paraffin first to clear out the xylene?

Any help would be deeply, deeply appreciated.

--Thanks in advance,
Jack England

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