Mike,
		you can slice these with a machine such as the Silverstone
Taylor cutter
which uses a thin diamond disc run on an air turbine blade. Most of the
other cut off machines use thicker blades. The problem is that it takes a
lot of fiddling about getting several samples cut and for your protocol
probably time is of the essence.
When we wanted to expose growth plates in long bones of rats we stripped
off most of the muscle, rinmsed with sterile saline and then culture
medium. Bones  then held down on a sterile dissecting board using large
hemostats. We then cut lengthwise using single edged razor blades, new
sterile blade for each bone, rinsed again with mediumm etc. This may seem
somewhat crude but with a little  practice works well and is very rapid.

Barry

At 08:33 AM 2/4/99 +0000, you wrote:
>Dear All,
>I have been asked by one of our research workers to think of a way of
>slicing rat tibia lengthways to expose the growth plate so that the
>bones can then be put into culture.  Does anyone have any ideas or
>know of any devices that would enable him to do this?
>
>Mike
>
>Michael Bromley PhD
>Histology Department
>Paterson Institute
>Wilmslow Road
>Manchester M20 9BX
>UK
>
>
>
>