MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Hi, I’m new to this so forgive me if I use the wrong terminology. How does one go about making your own “permanent” prepared slides for a personal archive? I’d like to start a collection of things I find.

While temporary mounts are quite simple, making permanent ones is an art of nearly limitless depth. Moreover, each type of sample has different approaches and known solutions. I would recommend firstly checking out the posts here on the subject as well as the subforum devoted to books, of which there are many on the subject. My personal favorite to start with would be Gray's Handbook of Basic Microtechnique.

Just to add to Bram's excellent answer, because different techniques are needed to make permanent mounts of different types of organisms, it is easiest to start by making permanent mounts of one kind of organism, and mastering that technique before moving onto another kind of organism. It is much easier to "transition" from a method you know well to a new method, than it is trying to learn multiple (often quite different) mounting methods at the same time.

To add just a tad more, I would look at PVOH-Glycerin as a mountant for starting out as it's pretty forgiving, easy to clean up, inexpensive to make, and works on a lot of different subjects.

The main focus for this paper is botanical samples, but it can work with other subjects. https://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resb ... ia2014.pdf

Glycerin is often described as temporary mounts, but I have some nematodes that were put into 60-70 years ago that look quite good.