![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
I've been busy this weekend after getting home for Thanksgiving. I've processed all the material from Fan's Pensacola sand sample. I first boiled them with H202 and separated out some foramins before boiling them in HCL, to clean them up some more using the hardware variety Muriatic acid for the HCL boil. The HCL ate up everything including the foramins. The only thing left were the diatoms and some small bits of sand. I used the centrifuge to help separate out the diatoms initially but noticed that some of the delicate forms were being damaged, so I've resorted to just letting them settle out via gravity and time. I give it two hours between rinses.
Then I made a bunch of unmounted strew slides so I could separate out the diatoms to a storage slide, in order to make some arranged slides from them. I got the micro-manipulator limbered up and managed to get some glass needles pulled from capillary tubes without burning my fingers. It reminded me of high school and college labs when we would melt and pull out stings of glass from capillary tubes.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
Cleaned up the slides and cover slips and brought out the adhesive and mountant and made some sample slide runs to just get back in the hang of things. It's been awhile since I started this up the first time. A relearning process for sure because I had diatoms floating here and there. One slide I had too much adhesive and the diatoms just sank into the adhesive with only indentations where they were placed.
In the mean time, I'm starting to process Rod's sample from Iowa. I just finished boiling in HCL and I have to say, that sample is like a boulder field.
I will post some pictures when time allows.