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Post by rwhitman on Mar 27, 2021 17:40:15 GMT -8
How high on the pin should the top of the thorax be? I'm trying to standardize this in my display cases. Randy
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Post by nomihoudai on Mar 27, 2021 17:57:50 GMT -8
I have a wooden block that I use to push in the needle. Each of the sides is 14mm high, there is a center piece connecting these blocks that will push the needle. That leaves enough space to handle specimen.
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Post by exoticimports on Mar 27, 2021 18:33:17 GMT -8
Do you mean all wings at equal height?
Very difficult because heavy bodied specimens take more space on the pin.
I also sometimes use a block, and always for labels. Usually though I position based on when my fingers holding the pin touch the top of the thorax. Having done this many thousands of times, and in conjunction with the sensitivity of human finger tips, my specimens are within 2mm of the same position.
Note though this is incidental, not intentional
Chuck
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Post by eurytides on Mar 27, 2021 19:35:21 GMT -8
I have read 1/3 of the pin should be above the thorax.
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Post by rwhitman on Mar 28, 2021 11:27:04 GMT -8
Thanks guys, 1/3 of the pin length is 12mm. I read somewhere that 10mm is too little and 13mm is too much. That makes 12mm just right. The distance your finger tips would push a specimen would vary from person to person, depending of the thickness of their thumbs. But my thumbs take up about 10-11mm of space on the pins. So that all gives me all the guidance I need. Thanks again.
One more thing, what do you guys use to protect your collections from carpet beetles (Dermestids)?
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Post by exoticimports on Mar 28, 2021 13:42:46 GMT -8
I think it doesn’t really matter. You need enough to grab the pin, and enough for data labels on the bottom.
Chuck
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jwa121
Junior Member
Posts: 28
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Post by jwa121 on Mar 28, 2021 14:17:18 GMT -8
Back when a car was a car and not a computer, and I was a kid looking for a way of uniformly adjusting the height of my butterflies on their pins, my (machinist) father solved the problem for me with a car part: the (manual) choke from a 1950s English car called an Austin. (My mother used to drive it.) The part my father used consisted of a knob and an attached metal stem, which he drilled out to the appropriate depth. The drilled-out stem rides down the insect pin until the bottom of the stem just touches the top of the insect thorax. You might say I take a top down approach to uniformly adjusting the heights of my Saturniid moths on their pins. I do it "manually." :-)
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Post by Paul K on Mar 28, 2021 18:29:06 GMT -8
I use marked tooth pick ( I cut the pointy end of it not to damage thorax). The distance from the bottom of the pin head and top of thorax is 11-12mm.
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