Cracks no more
A huge thank you to everyone who replied and offered advice on how to get
rid of cracks in paraffin wax blocks. I have re-embedded my last batch
today, following your advice and I'm so happy to say they are all
beautifully smooth without a crack in sight. Maybe I'm a little sad but
it's really made my day, it's been driving me mad for the last 3 months and
now I have blocks I can be proud of.
It looks like the coldplate must have been too cold, as a lot of people
suggested. It is set by the manufacturer at -5 degrees C, so I placed a
couple of layers of blue roll on it, as Nancy suggested, and that has done
the trick. I'm going to contact the Leica rep who set up the equipment and
see if we can have the temperature of our coldplate increased. I also
stirred the paraffin reservoir in the embedding centre so that may have
helped too.
Kind regards,
Nicola Cragg
Epistem Ltd.
Manchester, UK
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