Non-Professional Sources for Chemicals and Glassware for Permanent Slide Making
Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 10:17 pm
Over the next few weeks, I'll post information of where to find chemicals and glassware to make permanent slides. If you know of a good source, please contribute!
This is a big topic, and will be broken down into individual sections on chemicals for fixatives, dehydrating chemicals, stains, clearing agents, and mounting media.
To get started, here is a link to a Wikipedia article on readily available chemicals:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... _chemicals
This appears to be a condensed version of two lists formerly broken into Inorganic and Organic Chemicals, that listed names of sources in the USA and UK. The website hosting the original lists was taken down and the website owner, a UK citizen, was thrown in prison. Not sure what the charges were, but may have involved having chemicals that were illegal for him to own.
Those lists can be viewed using the Wayback Machine, but I won't post them unless the administrator here feels it's OK.
I suspect in the UK and Europe, there are far fewer consumer products made up completely of one chemical as the sole ingredient, but putting our heads together, some sources may be known to members here.
Before delving more deeply into the individual categories in the coming weeks, here are a few teasers.
Chemicals from the supermarket:
Alum, in the spice section. Used as a mordant in recipes for hematoxylin stains and aqueous carmine stains. These work very well for tiny critters or their innards small enough to mount whole.
Distilled white vinegar, 5% acetic acid in water. Some old fixative recipes used acetic acid in 5% or lower concentrations, so the vinegar can be used as the source of acetic acid for these. Can also be used to make alcohol slightly acid for destaining.
Epsom salts in the drug section, magnesium sulfate. This can be spread out into shallow pans and roasted in the oven to drive off the water of crystallization. The anydrous product can be added to denatured alcohol to absorb the few percent of water and make the alcohol anydrous. This usually takes several days to a couple of weeks. More about the usefulness of anydrous alchohol later. Magnesium sulfate is mostly non toxic. It's mixed with warm water to soak one's feet in. Magnesium sulfate can also be used as a narcotic to sedate many small marine invertebrates before fixation. It also works well with freshwater Chaetogaster worms, but no others. A different fairly easy to get chemical works well on most other freshwater invertebrates.
All the above mentioned items are things I have worked with, except using magnesium sulfate to dehydrate alcohol. But I've seen references on the web from some kind of nefarious chemical experimentation forums that it works well. I have used roasted copper sulfate to dehydrate alcohol, because that was popular in the late 19th century, when most of my reference works were written. But magnesium sulfate is a lot less toxic, and probably more available outside the USA. 3A molecular sieves work well also, and can be easily purchased on Ebay.
Glassware:
Syracuse watch glasses were once popular for preparation of small specimens, and are still available from lab supply companies or on Ebay. Some larger versions of syracuse watch glasses can be found on Ebay as glass furniture coasters. They haven't been manufactured for years, as far as I can tell, but there are lots of them on Ebay. I have bought a few lots and they work well.
Stender dishes. These can also be used for small specimen preparation. In some of the local crafts stores, like Michael's or Crafts Warehouse, there are some small glass containers called tea-light candle holders. They look a lot like stender dishes. I bought and use some.
More to come in the next few days and weeks, much more.
This is a big topic, and will be broken down into individual sections on chemicals for fixatives, dehydrating chemicals, stains, clearing agents, and mounting media.
To get started, here is a link to a Wikipedia article on readily available chemicals:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... _chemicals
This appears to be a condensed version of two lists formerly broken into Inorganic and Organic Chemicals, that listed names of sources in the USA and UK. The website hosting the original lists was taken down and the website owner, a UK citizen, was thrown in prison. Not sure what the charges were, but may have involved having chemicals that were illegal for him to own.
Those lists can be viewed using the Wayback Machine, but I won't post them unless the administrator here feels it's OK.
I suspect in the UK and Europe, there are far fewer consumer products made up completely of one chemical as the sole ingredient, but putting our heads together, some sources may be known to members here.
Before delving more deeply into the individual categories in the coming weeks, here are a few teasers.
Chemicals from the supermarket:
Alum, in the spice section. Used as a mordant in recipes for hematoxylin stains and aqueous carmine stains. These work very well for tiny critters or their innards small enough to mount whole.
Distilled white vinegar, 5% acetic acid in water. Some old fixative recipes used acetic acid in 5% or lower concentrations, so the vinegar can be used as the source of acetic acid for these. Can also be used to make alcohol slightly acid for destaining.
Epsom salts in the drug section, magnesium sulfate. This can be spread out into shallow pans and roasted in the oven to drive off the water of crystallization. The anydrous product can be added to denatured alcohol to absorb the few percent of water and make the alcohol anydrous. This usually takes several days to a couple of weeks. More about the usefulness of anydrous alchohol later. Magnesium sulfate is mostly non toxic. It's mixed with warm water to soak one's feet in. Magnesium sulfate can also be used as a narcotic to sedate many small marine invertebrates before fixation. It also works well with freshwater Chaetogaster worms, but no others. A different fairly easy to get chemical works well on most other freshwater invertebrates.
All the above mentioned items are things I have worked with, except using magnesium sulfate to dehydrate alcohol. But I've seen references on the web from some kind of nefarious chemical experimentation forums that it works well. I have used roasted copper sulfate to dehydrate alcohol, because that was popular in the late 19th century, when most of my reference works were written. But magnesium sulfate is a lot less toxic, and probably more available outside the USA. 3A molecular sieves work well also, and can be easily purchased on Ebay.
Glassware:
Syracuse watch glasses were once popular for preparation of small specimens, and are still available from lab supply companies or on Ebay. Some larger versions of syracuse watch glasses can be found on Ebay as glass furniture coasters. They haven't been manufactured for years, as far as I can tell, but there are lots of them on Ebay. I have bought a few lots and they work well.
Stender dishes. These can also be used for small specimen preparation. In some of the local crafts stores, like Michael's or Crafts Warehouse, there are some small glass containers called tea-light candle holders. They look a lot like stender dishes. I bought and use some.
More to come in the next few days and weeks, much more.