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| Fruit slice immersed in glycerin. |
I'm experimenting with embalming fruit slices. I've been unhappy with using plastic fake fruit as garnishes in my plastic beverages. I've tried embedding raw untreated fruit in the resin, but the water content seems to screw things up. I read online about some tricks that florists use to preserve flowers and leaves -- contact with glycerin. If you dip the stems of flowers or leaves in glycerin, it displaces the water and preserves the look and feel of the flowers. My hypothesis is that the glycerin will displace most of the water in the fruit slice w/o compromising the look and appearance, and being closer chemically to the plastic, will be more compatible. I'm not so much worried about subsequent decomposition when one of these is embedded in plastic -- it's an anaerobic environment. Plus glycerol is a cheap and nontoxic substance to work with and to dispose of.
Wish me luck!
17 comments:
LUCK!
PS: The word "glycerin" is synonymous with glycerol. Glycerol gets its name from the Greek word for sweet. I tasted some just now. It is sweet.
PPS: The element beryllium was originally named glucinium, supposedly because of the sweetish taste of its chloride salts. Beryllium is highly toxic and should never be tasted, even if you're wearing it as jewelry.
Thanks, deborah! :)
Google is amazing: embalming fruit
Cool article...looks like you have more tests to run if glycerin doesn't work out. 'Nite.
Glycerol is chemically similar to syrup, so yes, what I'm doing is akin to home canning.
Just to be a bit circular, the word "embalm" has the notion of resin embedded in it. I am embalming fruit by embedding it in plastic resin. But my plastic resin is incompatible with water.
Cool.
No Darcy. You're cool. :)
BTW, what a cool new avi.
Chick
I found a recipe for Benedictine that included the following ingredients:
Sweet spirits niter
Acetic ether
Spirits ammonia
The Niter used to be a common home remedy and from what I read the FDA classified it as a new medicine and refuses to approve it without extensive tests.
The ether sounds toxic,but naturally occurs in wine fermentation.
Spirits of Ammonia, is smelling salts. I would think it toxic also, but I have read a claim of someone adding it to Coca Cola.
Are you familiar with any of these?
@ampersand: I love comments like that. So alchemical. Let me consults my books for an answer. :0
Woodworkers face a similar issue, especially when starting with green, that is, freshly cut wood.
There are two type of moisture that have to be dealt with when drying wood - the moisture that is resident in the cells that used to carry sap, and the moisture in the walls of the wood cells themselves.
If you think of wood as a bundle of straws, that is a pretty good analogy. Drain the straws and the bulk of the moisture in the wood is gone.
Now, to dry the walls of the straws themselves - well, that is a different issue.
In Germany they let the wood sit around for 400 years and then it is dry, stable and ready to be used to make a violin. The problem with that is you had to start that process 400 years ago.
You can dry it by moving air across it - warm air, hot air, whatever, but then the wood tends to crack.
You can displace the moisture in the cells using alcohol. A guy named Sexton down in Georgia claims to have perfected a process to dry entire logs using alcohol, with no degradation of the wood, but he was difficult to deal with and most experienced wood technologists claim he was a huckster.
The Moulthrop family has been turning very large hollow forms starting with green logs, and they use PEG - polyethylene glycol to displace the cellular moisture. That process changes the appearance of the wood and affects how the turning will take an applied finish, but it does stabilize the wood and leave it looking, mostly, wood-like, with a somewhat plastic-like appearance.
So there you have it - water between the cells, water in the cell walls, dry it or displace it - not sure any of these methods would work with fruit slices, but cells are cells, right?
I would consider PEG - a small batch would not be too expensive and it might just work.
Thanks Chick! :)
Reminding you to send me your CV. We hire a lot of consultants and I have connections for the first time ever in my life. Might be fun side work to support your artistry!
Glycerol is chemically similar to syrup, so yes, what I'm doing is akin to home canning
I thought of this when I read your post. Candying or canning the fruit. Kind of like these Fruit jellies except with whole slices of fruit instead of just juice. There is a place in Oregon that is famous for its fruit jellies, especially the cranberry ones. Bandon by the Sea. I've been wanting to make this candy for the longest time!
I wonder if your slices would be edible? MMmmmmmm candied lemon or lime slices. Sweet and tart at the same time.
Good luck.
The idea of candying reminds me of another wood turner I know who tried various glycerin products, including soaps containing glycerin, to stabilize turnings, who then switched over to using a sucrose solution. Talk about a sweet deal!
When Eva Peron was stuffed after her death, the embalmer replaced her blood with glycerin.
The body was still intact 20 years later when returned to Argentina after Juan Peron's death.
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