[Nhcoll-l] Opening specimen jars with jammed ground glass stoppers?

[Truth Muller]

Hello,

I am currently one of a small team of students from College of the Atlantic
doing extensive restoration work on the George B. Dorr Natural History
Museum collections. We are preparing the entirety of the Museum's
collections to be moved to a new, modern storage facility which is still
under construction.

I am responsible for the Ichthyological and Marine Invertebrates wet
collections, which have unfortunately suffered from neglect over the past
10-15 years. Only about 60-70% of the Ichthyological collection specimens
are in modern jars with screw-top lids, and the rest are in e in much older
jars with ground glass stoppers. Some of them are sealed with silicone, a
few with an unidentified wax, and others have simply self-sealed with their
own fluids congealing between the jar and the stopper. Many of these jars
need to be topped off, and a few are cracked and urgently need to be
replaced, but almost every single stopper is stuck fast as though
super-glued. We have not yet found a way to open them without putting the
specimens inside in harm's way.

What is the best method that we can use to open these jammed jars,
preserving the specimen, and, ideally, the jars as well? Any help or advice
would be greatly appreciated!

~Truth Muller
George B. Dorr Museum of Natural History
College of the Atlantic '21
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