Sylvia S. Edwards wrote:

>Cigarette lighter fluid, the kind you buy to refill the old type lighters,
>is naphtha.  It is flammable, but not explosive. I have kept it around for
>years.  It is an excellent household cleaning product.  Removes grease, oil,
>tax, wax, gum, labels, crayon and heel marks.

Tax? Yes, it's true. I dunked an IRS agent in naptha, threw a match... It
really does work!

Yeah, yeah, I hear you whiners. The shell-related portion:

Here at the Mussel Museum we dunk unionids in a solution of 1 lb paraffin
dissolved in a gallon or so of xylene or toluene. The shells are left to dry
under a hood, and the result is a nearly invisible coating that retards the
flaking of the periostracum - which is very important to unionids. All of
the outer color pattern is strictly in the periostracum - the shell is white
(except for the nacre inside - so DON'T remove the periostracum from
unionids!). Don't try this at home kids without adequate ventilation.
Carcinogenic. Flammable. "It will rearrange your chromiums." Nuffsaid.

But this raises another question. In what other major group of molluscs is
the outer pigment and patterns only in the periostracum. Most people strip
away the periostracum from their marine specimens to get at the colors
underneath.








G. Thomas Watters
Ohio Biological Survey &
Aquatic Ecology Laboratory
Ohio State University
1315 Kinnear Road
Columbus, OH  USA
v: 614-292-6170
f: 614-292-0181