[Histonet] cutting with glassknifes

[Paula Sicurello]

Gurtrude,  
It's not a common practice anymore to use glass with a microtome.   If you are using a methacrylate you have to use glass, a razor blade isn't strong enough to handle the shear forces.
The art of hand breaking the knives....well that's becoming a lost art.  I can't do that anymore.  I have to use a knifebreaker.

Paula Sicurello 
 
  On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 9:40 AM, Ross Langston via Histonet<histonet at lists.utsouthwestern.edu> wrote:   Hello- I do not work in a conventional histology lab, but we
exclusively use resin (JB-4) Embedding and glass knives on MT-1s to do
histology on gonadal tissue for fisheries research.  Although the MT-1 is
an ultramicrotome, we use it more like a conventional microtome. The reason
we do this rather than wax histology is that our "lab" travels to some
pretty remote areas (Papua New Guinea, Micronesia, etc) and you need less
stuff to do resin histology (really only a JB-4 Kit, microtome, and some
glass knives plus whichever staining method you prefer) and can even do it
without power.

We actually have a workshop coming up soon in Guam, if you are interested.

Ross




On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 6:19 AM Gudrun Lang via Histonet <
histonet at lists.utsouthwestern.edu> wrote:

> Dear histonetters!
>
> I have a question for the experienced histo-people.
>
> Is it still in practice to use glassknifes for cutting on rotary- or
> sliding-microtomes? For plastic-embedded tissue in light-microscopy?
>
> Or ar glassknifes only found in EM-technique?
>
>
>
> I am just curious, because I assume, it is a rather difficult skill to
> handle.
>
> I made a short internet-search, but got no hints on this issue.
>
>
>
> Thank you and kind regards
>
> Gudrun Lang
>
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