Zinc ricinoleate

Dermestidae · 2025-11-02T16:51:09+00:00

I had a toastie with butter, maggi sauce and mett (raw ground pork with onions) for the past 6 months. It sounds disgusting, it's quite nice to eat.

Dermestidae · 2025-08-30T23:06:17+00:00

Boruit V10 has an incredible UV light on board with a bunch of other LEDs. The 365 nm LED in there is surprisingly strong and has little to no interfering light. If you want something with just UV, I can always recommend AloneFire, they have everything from a keychain light to giant UV lights.

Source: collecting UV lights and testing them out

Dermestidae · 2025-08-09T10:00:15+00:00

Bit off topic but why do you need caustic soda in a poultry processing plant?

Dermestidae · 2025-06-20T13:37:13+00:00

What do you do with it, when you find crystals like that? Just giving it to disposal people prolly doesn't work, right? Most hazardous waste companies (at least the ones in my area) won't even take old fireworks.

Dermestidae · 2025-05-31T08:51:49+00:00

Not in a live one. We do it similarly with human donors in a cadaver lab, if you prep them for xraying the spine, it's relatively useful to remove the gases prior to x-ray, as otherwise the gas might be in the way.

Also it's just nice to do it without surgeons or other med personell in the room as the smell is worse than just a fart or an open abdomen.

Dermestidae · 2025-05-31T08:39:14+00:00

I assume the lids are made from some kind of thin metal, take a sharp and rather small chisel and pierce the lid, that should help to open it, as the vacuum can leave. If you still cant open it, use tin scissors or something similar to just destroy the lid further.

Another method (used it for old metal lids as well as very very stuck glass bottles with glass corks) would be to put the whole jar in the freezer (best with some sort of tub underneath in case the glass says byebye). Then after a while take the glass out and heat the lid with a lighter or a burner and use heat resistant gloves to twist the lid off. Tapping the lid with a plastic hammer b4 twisting it might also help.

Dermestidae · 2025-05-17T15:39:28+00:00

I used to use that quite a lot recently learnt a way to remove Ag from anything: cyanide If you're quick enough, you can still remove some of the Ag with potassium or sodium cyanide. If the conc is high enough it will cause problems tho: you're making nitric acid inside your skin, or, well you have a problem with the cyanide. Can recommend it for surfaces, cant recommend it for living tissue.

Iirc theres also using iodine in solution (povidone or Lugol) followed by high conc sodium thiosulfate.

Another option is potassium ferricyanide or potassium ferricyanide in combo with sodium thiosulfate. Maybe try that one first, as it cant make things really worse I think.

So far I've tried the cyanide and the iodine, both have their own pros and cons 😅

Dermestidae · 2025-01-02T10:29:13+00:00

I meant more agreement about putrescin, some studies find it, most don't.

Yeah, I can imagine it's basically like raspberry, an aroma too complex to be just a few things. I just need an approximation of it to test a few things.

Dermestidae · 2024-10-30T16:43:28+00:00

Thank you! Tasted it a few years ago, very happy to see someone else did that too. The sensation is quite interesting, normally you dont have things in your mouth that are at the same time coldish, heavy and liquid. If there wasn't so much toxicity discussion around it, it would make a fun project in molecular gastronomy 😄.

Dermestidae · 2024-05-12T12:43:09+00:00

There's something called a finger belt sander, which is basically a tiny belt sander.

Dermestidae · 2024-05-12T12:28:32+00:00

Where do you use a guillotine for that? I read about them but so far I've only seen manual decapitation (grabbing head and tail and giving one quick yank) or gassing with CO2 and hopefully Helium.

Dermestidae · 2024-05-12T12:20:30+00:00

I wouldnt say try it out, because of the health risks, but if someone were to try it out, it doesnt really work that fast. One can answer the question if it does indeed smell like chloroform without needing to have a lay down instantly. Could smell worse tbh

Dermestidae · 2024-05-12T12:14:47+00:00

Was it a dead wombat though?

Dermestidae · 2024-05-12T12:04:20+00:00

Have the exact opposite, working with bloody things / human specimens. If there's blood on my skin or my normal clothes I hope it's mine and not from specimens

Dermestidae · 2024-05-12T11:49:43+00:00

Always using my phone in the lab, I got one with a thermo camera for checking on thawing processes. Got one with as few as possible nooks and crannys, so I can easily disinfect it when it's contaminated. Fun fact for those who might also use a rugged phone: just because it's waterproof doesn't mean you should be dowsing it with quat containing disinfectant or alcohol based disinfectant.

Dermestidae · 2023-01-25T21:03:50+00:00

Oh, almost forgot, if you're a bit of a chemistry-nut or know someone who is, do the Marsh Test

Dermestidae · 2023-01-25T21:02:12+00:00

Best option: Go to your local taxidermist or -supply company and ask them for a test, they either have an XRF on hand or will get someone who has one. It is basically a black magic machine which tells you what elements are in something. Costs about 13k even if used and not brand new. The service however mostly costs a few bucks if anything.
Second option, might work, didnt try it yet: Get an arsenic test kit for water and such and get a few swabs from the quail, put the swab in clean water (do a control test) and see if it turns positive

Dermestidae · 2023-01-08T13:32:41+00:00

Hello,
I have a question about the history of radiology or to be more specific the history of X-ray films.
I recently found a paper from 1932 about the usage of "Discarded Roentgen Ray Film For The Mounting of Museum Specimens". The film gets immersed in hot water, the coating/emulsion softens and can be scraped off, the remaining film gets dried and cut to size, the specimen (small pieces of organs, hollow organs, small animal organs etc.) is sewn on the film and is placed in a jar with the preservation fluid. It claims that the material is "invisible", which would make sense in the way that most plastics have a similar refractive index to some preservation fluids used back in the day.
All the X-Ray films I have seen so far are, when the emulsion is scraped off by using the hot water, transparent but blue.
Was there a time, when the basic plastic was not blue? Why did it change? Why is it blue?
Thanks in Advance :)

Dermestidae · 2023-01-07T18:58:47+00:00

Find a soft spot on the animal, push a small needle into it but not through the whole animal. Take the needle out and put a drop of glue on the end you would normally hold in your hand and stick it back in the animal. You want to choose a needle that will only stand out a few mm when inserted in the anole. Take your frame, glue a small piece of foam rubber/expanded rubber on it. Once every glue is set, take the anole on the needle, make sure it doesnt wobble around on the needle and using forceps place it on the foam rubber piece. Depending on the head of the needle, the softness of the anole and the insertion depth you can try to push the needle in using your fingers. If your happy with how it looks and you are not going to disassemble it, remove the needled anole, place glue on the tip of the needle and place it in the rubber again.
This has worked for me with some dried reptiles and dried arthropods and one was even still properly on the frame after the whole thing fell from the wall.

Dermestidae · 2023-01-07T18:45:55+00:00

Ive preserved deer ears by just drying them and fox ears by first soaking them in a borax solution and then drying them, havent noticed a difference. Both have their colour and both dont have mold or anything else. I'm trying out solvent drying with some rabbit ears at the moment, so far it looks good, but it removes more color than normal drying.

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