relaxing jar

[Cris Guppy & Aud Fischer]

As an added note, if you have relaxed specimens and then cannot immediately
spread them, just store them in the deep freeze. As they are spread within a
couple weeks, they will still be relaxed when you thaw them.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kenelm Philip" <fnkwp at aurora.alaska.edu>
To: <leps-l at lists.yale.edu>
Sent: September 22, 2000 1:40 AM
Subject: Re: relaxing jar


>
> > Can anyone recommend a good technique for relaxing butterfly specimens.
>
> In my experience, most problems with relaxing arise from layering
specimens
> in the relaxer, which may have a rather small cross-section. The essential
> thing is to have a large surface area of water, and then a single layer of
> well-separated specimens. Such a setup will relax small to average-sized
> butterflies (up to _Colias_ and _Speyeria_, for example) in no more than
> a day and a half. Lycaenids are relaxed within a day. Rapid relaxing
reduces
> the time during which mold can grow.
>
> The setup I have been using for many years now is the following:
>
> A 12 by 18 inch (3-inch deep) Pyrex baking dish with a 1/4 inch plate
glass
> lid. The lid has four holes drilled in it, and two wooden handles are
> attached on the top. A tight seal between the lid and the upper edge of
> the Pyrex dish was made by running a bead of silicone caulk along the top
> of the edge of the dish, coating the bottom of the plate glass above that
> bead with Vaseline, and lowering the lid onto the caulk--and leaving it
> there for a long time (preferably a month) until the caulk had cured. Then
> remove the lid and clean up the Vaseline--and you'll have a good seal when
> the lid is placed on the dish
>
> The dish is then filled with about an inch of clean sand, and the sand is
> saturated with water. I then made a frame out of 3/4" thick wood, which
> just fits in the dish on top of the sand, and stapled fiberglass screen
> tightly across the frame. Some PDB is placed on the sand under the screen
> to retard the growth of mold. I usually place 5x8" file cards over the
> screen, and then place butterflies in their glassine envelopes on the
> cards without overlapping the envelopes. After say 8 hours I take the
> specimens out of the envelopes (they are no longer so brittle that this
> is a problem) and place them on top of their envelopes (so as not to
> get the data on the envelopes mixed up) for the remainder of the day to
> day-and-a-half needed to relax the specimens.
>
> The large area of water, and the good circulation within the
> relaxer, result in reliable fast relaxing. Mold is no problem.
>
> This may seem like a lot of trouble to go through for relaxing,
> but the setup has to be made only once. When one is spreading tens of
> thousands of specimens, anything that speeds relaxing and makes the
> specimens come out of the relaxer in good shape is worth it. And even
> for smaller jobs such a setup makes life easier... A smaller dish with
> a similar setup would be fine for small occasional relaxing jobs, as
> long as you maintain the single non-overlapping layer of specimens.
>
> I have run into a few problems with material sent to me from
> other collectors, which require extra time in the relaxer. I have no idea
> what is involved here. Maybe the fact that I use ethyl acetate as a kil-
> ling agent is relevant. My own papered material, even when over 30 years
> old, relaxes within the times mentioned above. The indoor climate here
> in Fairbanks is _very_ dry (at least in the winter), so the papered
> specimens are dry, and have been kept dry. Any chemicals which denature
> proteins will, of course, make specimens difficult (or impossible?) to
> relax--so don't allow anything like formaldehyde near papered material.
>
> Ken Philip
> fnkwp at uaf.edu
>
>
>