Well, it's not exactly fair to compare trichromes such as AZAN or Masson's with H&E, I suppose. H&E is in itself a beautifull staining technique, when applied correct (very rare) but it serves a different purpose compareed to tri-, quadri-, ... staining methods: It offers the lab and easy, quick, th...

It's an artery allright, stained with elastic-Van Gieson staining technique. The picture shows the arterie's inner layer of elastic fibers, stained dark-brown by orcein, surrounded by a thick layer of smooth muscle, stained yellow by the picric acid in Van Gieson's stain. Collagen is stained red by ...

Probably an iron haematoxylin-Van Gieson variant, but the red and yellow has faded as can be expected from Van Gieson: it isn't very stable, unless special care is being taken in finishing the slide (mounting in canada balsam, acidified with salisylic acid). Van Gieson's stain is a mixture of picric...

Can you prepare a really good Irish coffee? Meaning: a layer of whisky at the bottom, a layer of strong coffee on top of that, followed by a layer of freshly whipped cream? The trick is to put in the whisky and to poor, slowly and gently, the coffee in, so that the two don't mix, but remain as separ...

This is from Romeis' Mikroskopische Technik, 16th edition, 1968:

Contrary to what one reads in most textbooks, hot 2-propanol dissolves paraffin wax pretty wel. It can be used as an intermedium between ethyl alcohol and wax. If memory serves me right, the method is described in an edition of the German classic "Romeis Mikroskopische Technik". I tried it a few tim...

Mike, You've just saved yourself countless hours of annoyance...your embedding and sectioning will be vastly better than trying beeswax and harder paraffin homebrew mixes. David I've used a homebrew mixture of 95/5 W/W household paraffin/beeswax for years and I was very pleased with the results. Cu...

Perhaps this is of some use. It's from the 1934 edition of "Précis de Microscopy" by Maurice Langeron:

The stainless molds are nice, I like them too. But for limited amateur use they can get a bit expensive. [...] David You're right. At the time I bought embedding molds from Leica and I combined them with casettes from the German brand Carl Roth GmbH. Both were horribly expensive indeed. However, I ...

Over the years I used all sorts of embedding molds, including match boxes and the folded paper boxes mentioned by discomorphella. Later on I used those latex-alike ice cube molds and still later I switched to the current standard in histology/histopathology: stainless steel molds and the histocasett...

Cyk-Cyk: I suppose mounting those without any loss of spores is impossible. These organisms are designed to spread as much spores as possible. "Young" conidia keep their spores better, as can be expected. "Young" samples are also less hydrophobic. A long time ago I tried to document the development ...

For temporary and semi-permanent mounts, these are mount by mycoloigists in one of Amman's media, the most often used being Amman's lactophenol, a mounting medium containing lactic acid, carbolic acid and glycerin. It's R.I. is about 1,44. Composition is as follows: Carbolic acid: 1gm lactic acid: 1...

Sorry for reviving such an old tread, but I'm intrigued by the picture... IMHO, the arm and focussing controls remind me not of "WILD", but of "WILL Wetzlar", a lesser known microscope manufacturer from Germany. The foot on the other hand, reminds me of older PZO-Warsawa microscopes... Perhaps a mic...

You're welcome, Raymond. I'm glad I can be of help with the few things I know. Ah well, as they say: "it takes some wisdom for a man to know that he doesn't know all that much". A comforting thought... Regarding manuals on the Leitz 1300: my inquiry didn't return a 1300 manual, but someone send me a...

This is the techniques I used to stretch and attach paraffin sections, using Mayer's egg albumen: - Smear an as thin as possible layer of egg albumen on some slides - Divide the ribbon into individual sections using a sharp knife, such as a scalpel: http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/userpix/3834...