[Nhcoll-l] PTFE tape on jars

[Richard Morse]

Hello Paul,
Unless I'm missing something, you may have the capacity to assess the
efficacy of plumbers tape yourself - if it is only present in a section
of your collection, how does it compare to the rest?
---Rick

 
Richard Morse, Ph.D.
Collections Manager Ichthyology and Decapod Collection
New York State Museum
145 Jordan Road
Troy NY 12180
518 283 9005
518 473 8121
rmorse at mail.nysed.gov>>> Kirsten Nicholson <norops at gmail.com> 1/10/2014
5:18 PM >>>
So we have been using this type of tape in our collections for the same
reasons, with mixed results. Before I got here they were using the tape,
and students working here claimed that it helped reduce loss of ethanol.
After being here a few years, we moved our collection to a new room that
did NOT have HVAC control and limited humidity/temperature control. In
that new room, we noticed a dramatic increase in the loss of ethanol
within the jars. I can't say that you wouldn't find the same effect in
state of the art jars and lids, but I can say that the tape didn't
prevent the loss anyway.

There's another bothersome issue with the tape and that is when you
take lids off, the tape has to be newly applied because the old tape has
a tendency to fall apart. So I'm not a huge fan of the tape, but if you
don't have museum quality lids, the options are limited. What I don't
know is if you're better off without the tape. My sense is that its
better to have it, but I haven't taken data to show that.

My two cents.

Kirsten


On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 4:48 PM, Callomon,Paul <prc44 at drexel.edu>
wrote:



Folks,

At least 20 years ago (before my time here), white plumbers’ tape was
wrapped around the edge of the lids and onto the sides of all the bottle
and jars in a certain section of our alcohol collections. This is the
PTFE tape that plumbers use to seal threads; it is thin, soft and
non-adhesive. Presumably the idea was to provide a secondary vapor
barrier in addition to the jar lid seal. 
We are now doing long-overdue major maintenance on this collection, and
are trying to assess the efficacy of this tape. I’d be very interested
to hear from anyone who (a) has used it and can show it works (b) has
used it and can show it doesn’t work, or (c) who considered using it but
decided not to, and why.


Paul Callomon
Collection Manager, Malacology, Invertebrate Paleontology and General
Invertebrates

Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103-1195, USA
callomon at ansp.org Tel 215-405-5096 ( tel:215-405-5096 ) - Fax
215-299-1170 ( tel:215-299-1170 )


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-- 
Kirsten E. Nicholson, Ph.D

Assoc. Prof. Biology and Curator of Natural History
Dept. of Biology Museum of Cultural and Natural History
217 Brooks Hall 103 Rowe Hall
Central Michigan Univ. Central Michigan University 
Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859 Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859
989-774-3758 989-774-3829








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