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Hi Richard! The "Berkeley" method is to use one of those guillotine-like paper cutters to cut large urban telephone books (or Sigma or Aldrich catalogs!) into slices the height you want, and to then tape these up snugly on all sides except the top to let pins slip tightly between the pages, while the label stays on the top cut surface. An advantage is that you can line up rows of labels for each height on the pin and "assembly-line" the process more than you can with commercial pinning blocks (assuming the phone book is for a VERY large city!). You can even have the students assemble these themselves and then they know how to make their own. The drawback is the need for enforcing "quality control". As for heights, I think it's a bit unavoidable for big beetles, tettigoniids, sphingids, etc. to have a slightly less desirable height above the specimen for gripping. Being a braconid specialist, I do not sweat this too much! Personally, I have more problems with long fragile antennae than with the space above the specimen. Jim > We purchase pinning blocks from BioQuip for students in classes making > collections, but we have modified the heights of the steps for ones we use > to point/label museum material. An advantage of the MEM block is that a > third label can be added and remain visible because its level is equal to > thickness of the foam in unit trays (8-10mm). The disadvantage is that > there's only 12mm at top of pin in MEM version to hold with thumb/finger > vs 15mm in BioQuip version, and the latter would be an advantage for > people with bigger fingers. I'm curious about heights of levels in pinning > blocks used by others, and if anyone would have problems in holding a > pointed specimen with only 12mm between point and top of pin. > > Richard L. Brown, Director > Mississippi Entomological Museum > P.O. Drawer 9775 (100 Old Highway 12) > Mississippi State, MS 39762 > PH: 662-325-2990 > FAX: 662-325-8837 > > -- James B. Whitfield Department of Entomology 320 Morrill Hall 505 S. Goodwin Avenue University of Illinois Urbana, IL 61801 http://www.life.illinois.edu/whitfield