Questions about starfish

[drumlogic]

This Is Cross posted to several communities. I have a question about starfish. I am working on building a specimen cabinet with a specific collection in each in one or two drawers.(like a drawer just of different seed pod plants, one of just a certain class of insect, and so on and so forth)kind of like this

Comments

[mokele]

I'm not sure about de-stinking them, but I do know that if you boil an echinoderm, you're pretty much left with soup with a few crunchy bits.

Maybe immersion in alcohol to drive out the water, then letting the alcohol evaporate?

[modastrid]

wait do you really have a cabinet that looks like that? an entomology cabinet?
Goes off to weep from immense jealously ;)

[drumlogic]

LOL not yet but we are going to build one. If you remember the mahogany book cases in my collection posts, me and my father built both of those out of real mahogany. I am in construction and I was blessed to have a dad who not only was good at structural work, but also could do detailed shop work as well. He is the one that got me started turning bases on a lathe to mount my pieces on. We are going to let the glass slide in from the back so a person can't get into the contents without taking the whole drawer out. Right now I have a good collection of starfish, shells, Wasp nests, and I am working on seed pods. We are also going to work on an Egg cabinet as well.

[tallymark]

The only thing I can think of is locking it in an airtight box with baking soda for awhile..? however I've never tried this on a starfish, so don't quote me on it! But it's how my mother and I would de-stink anything that came from my uncles house reeking of cigarettes.

[anonymissity]

Soak it in high % isopropyl overnight, then let them dry out, underside up, outside in the sun for a few days. Be sure to weigh down the legs unless you want them to curl up.
I used to live near the shore and we always collected dead starfish, and yeah, they reek.

[drumlogic]

what is isopropyl exactly?

[anonymissity]

alcohol.

[spiralsheep]

I collect fossil echinoderms: all the fivefold symmetry with none of the stench. ;-)

[drumlogic]

LOL! I would love some of those! and actually thought about including some in cabinet. My only problem is I don't know much about fossils and I don't know if I am being dooped or not when buying one!

[spiralsheep]

Fossil sea urchins are fairly common fossils so if you start with something like local U.S. sand dollars then you're unlikely to pay much or be sold a fake. Where I grew up I could pick up heart urchins (micrasters) in our garden, heh. Broken crinoid columns in matrix, which show off star-shaped stems much better than "perfect" whole specimens, are also common, although they tend to be small and intricate rather than large and impressive so they might be more fun to examine in the hand rather than in a display cabinet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_dollars

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Isocrinus_nicoleti_Encrinite_Mt_Carmel.jpg

Good luck with cleaning your starfish. :-)