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I'm looking for a better way to mount wool fibers for confocal work,
and am hoping someone here can help me improve this situation.

Currently, I'm using 25 mm wide slides with 22 mm wide cover slips,
together with Immersol. I place a fiber on the slide, add a drop of
Immersol, lay down a cover slip, and attempt to seal the whole thing
using nail polish.

What I find is that the sealing is pretty ineffective and messy. I
tend to get big globs of nail polish in some places while failing to
get a good seal all of the way around the perimeter of the cover
slip. Good permanent sealing is essential for me, because I'll want
to reuse these slides over the next year.

What other sealing techniques might be available for this? I am
preparing these slides infrequently and in small numbers (5 - 10 at a
time, every few months), and for other reasons cover slipping must be
done by hand. My first thought is to use wax or parafilm in some way.
Are there standard sealing techniques or tools for applying a nice
bead of liquid paraffin all of the way around the perimeter of a
cover slip? Are there wicking problems using liquified wax? What
about using a parafilm gasket that could be heat sealed - is this
something that people have worked out? Have IR light sources been
used to temporarily (and locally) melt parafilm? I would like to
avoid heating the whole slide .

Finally, can anyone suggest online or printed literature discussing
cover slipping techniques?

Thanks.

Bill Christens-Barry
-----------------------
Bill Christens-Barry, PhD
Equipoise Imaging, LLC
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410-750-9017