Observations on the preparation of sections of dental hard and soft tissues without conventional embedding procedures.

Inexpensive thin copper discs loaded with diamonds embedded in small slits around the periphery, may be used to cut sections from unembedded tooth samples without disrupting the cellular and extracellular components intimately associated with hard tissue interfaces. The tissue may be unfixed, fixed or cut using fixation or dye solutions as the lubricant. The use of these discs therefore opens up new avenues of histochemical investigation of hard tissue unrestricted by those artefacts associated with conventional or traditional methods of preparation.