Pine Needle II

[rnabholz]

After seeing the possibilities that Manfred so capably demonstrated on his Pine Needle posting earlier today, it reinforced my desire to take another run at it.

Tonight I placed more attention on my microtome cuts, and switched to a camera that gives me a bit more control over focus than the handheld phone camera. The image below was taken with a Sony DSC-V3 mounted on an afocal camera mount. No staining done. Darkfield lighting.

I think this image is better, but I am still chasing Manfred! Baby steps.... ;^)

Thanks for looking

Rod

[mrsonchus]

Aha - good section. The clean-cut edges without tearing show that your techniques is pretty good to me. This image has a lot more detail (and information in it) nice result.

John

[rnabholz]

Thank you John.

I changed the way I held the needles in the microtome and I believe it made for a more secure hold that allowed the knife to do it's job more cleanly.

Thanks for responding

Rod

[Manfred]

Rod,
I find this image much more better than 1st one.
One tipp: you have decided to cut pine needles - those are very hard to do, you need a lot of experience and exercise - try for the beginning to cut plants which are to cut more easy.
BR
Manfred

[mrsonchus]

Thank you John.

I changed the way I held the needles in the microtome and I believe it made for a more secure hold that allowed the knife to do it's job more cleanly.

Thanks for responding

Rod

Manfred's advice is good - perhaps try something bigger for learning technique. I used a nut & bolt but placed
my piece of Chrysanthemum flower-stalk into some molten (ordinary candle) wax in the bottom of the cavity so it 'stood up'. When
this hardened I filled up the rest of the space around the stalk with more molten wax and this too hardened quickly.
This gives a pretty good support to your specimen, even as small as a pine needle (and of course you can put
a 'bunch' of them upright in the wax and cut sections across perhaps 10-12 needles at once).
I'll try to find the picture I took of my first attempt - albeit a poor one, but the method was sound.

John

[gekko]

Very nice work! Looking forward to your 3rd section.

[rnabholz]

Thanks for the feedback and tips. All of it is appreciated as I have no local mentors, so every comment is very valuable.

Here is the set up I used to cut this section. I used a drill bit to make a hole in some carrot, and then packed it as tight as I could with pine needles.

The previous attempt, I tried to sandwich the needles between two slices of carrot. As you could see from the first try, it was not very effective.

I had another adventure tonight, which I will post shortly. I hope I am not wearing out my welcome. If so, please let me know.

Thanks again everyone.

Rod