PVA-G vs glycerin jelly
Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2021 2:14 pm
I seem not to be the only one to have recently become interest in PVA-G (see previous thread).
It turns out that Borax (one of the ingredients) is still available in the UK, though not at mainstream suppliers. According to sellers on Amazon it's no longer allowed for sale, but... just google.
So this week I started to experiment with PVA-G. I attach two pictures of daffodil pollen (same exposure, jpeg from the camera with no processing). The first one is a PVA-G mount, the second one glycerin jelly, I would say PVA-G offers a bit more contrast.
Other than that, I'd say they are equally easy/difficult to work with (I am just a beginner) as long as you warm up your slides and coverslips when using the jelly (6£ coffee warmer from eBay is all you need). I'd say even PVA-G benefits from some gentle warming of the slides. You get fewer bubbles (alas, still more than I would like, but that is operator error).
Here are the links to the full res images
https://ibb.co/Y79MJcq
https://ibb.co/SBgxq5W
It turns out that Borax (one of the ingredients) is still available in the UK, though not at mainstream suppliers. According to sellers on Amazon it's no longer allowed for sale, but... just google.
So this week I started to experiment with PVA-G. I attach two pictures of daffodil pollen (same exposure, jpeg from the camera with no processing). The first one is a PVA-G mount, the second one glycerin jelly, I would say PVA-G offers a bit more contrast.
Other than that, I'd say they are equally easy/difficult to work with (I am just a beginner) as long as you warm up your slides and coverslips when using the jelly (6£ coffee warmer from eBay is all you need). I'd say even PVA-G benefits from some gentle warming of the slides. You get fewer bubbles (alas, still more than I would like, but that is operator error).
Here are the links to the full res images
https://ibb.co/Y79MJcq
https://ibb.co/SBgxq5W