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

[Callomon,Paul]

I’ve had good results with just running warm water (not so hot you can’t touch it) over the whole top of the bottle and gently rocking the lid to free it.


Paul Callomon
Collection Manager, Malacology and General Invertebrates
________________________________
Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103-1195, USA
callomon at ansp.org<mailto:callomon at ansp.org> Tel 215-405-5096 - Fax 215-299-1170



From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Truth Muller
Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2019 3:46 PM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Opening specimen jars with jammed ground glass stoppers?


External.
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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