Hello
I've been reading this list for a while and until now have not had any reason
to speak up.
I used to buy and process abalone for commercial sale, and enjoy cleaning the
extra special shells that caught my eye. One of the surprising things I
discovered was that burrying shells in the dirt for a few months made them
much much much easier to clean. Must be some microbiological action involved.
Anyway, as for clorine bleach, I've found that 1 to 1 mixing of pool grade
chlorine with water and putting it in a spray bottle seemed to work the best.
I think the spraying infused a lot of air and made it work better than the "in
the bucket" way, and since it was not in the bucket with bleach, I did'nt have
to worry about leaving it in too long and eating the color of the shell.
Also, drying out the shell between sessions of cleaning made the hitchhiker
shells very brittle and easy to remove from the abalone shell, except for the
worm shells. They are so attached that the abalone shell is often deformed
underneath, so I leave em alone.
for what its worth
nels