HCA: Hermit Crab Association

I am always on the hunt for more shells and often I pick them up in home decor sections. Many of them are very crusty and I used to spend an eternity with my Dremel Tool and a Dentist Pick scraping them clean.
I heard that shell collectors use Muriatic Acid to clean their shells. We have a bottle in our pool house and I would like to give it a try!
My concern is that I have no clue if it will be save. I was thinking about using the acid, rinsing with lots of water and then soaking the shells in a baking soda/water solution to neutralize the acid. After that I would prep them the usual crab save way...

It would make the whole process of striping my shells a lot faster! I also ordered a stone tumbler. I want to polish my own shells
Any thoughts on that???


Update:

Up all night cleaning shells and messing around with the Dremel! The Magic Acid stuff worked great and the fumes are not that harsh.
Here are some pics of the shells I kept working with till this morning.





This is a shell that looked really nasty! Found it on the floor at Job Lots and they let me have it for free. I had to scrape some hot glue off it and then dipped in Acid, rinsed, neutralized, boiled in salt water, plopped into the cage at 3am and when I checked at 9:30am. LEONARD ALREADY MOVE IN! (It is a bit sandy)

Not to sure , one would think after neutralizing it with sodium bicarbonate that it would be fine then after you boil them in double strength salt water you would be safe? I know we use sodium bicarbonate at work to neutralize spills that are high in acid to control it and be able to handle it safely. I know Kelly trolling the forum and she is queen know it all of the msds so she might chime in


Hmmmm rock tumbler that strikes my curiosity and never thought of that. Is that how they polish the shells? I never looked into it before but would be interesting?

Once you neutralize the acid it will be fine. Be very careful with working with it though! My parent's collected fossils and my dad would use strong acids like muriatic to clean them up for display. He used to have burns all over his hands, and my mother complained for years how he ruined all her good hand towels. :roll: You should look into buying a pair of chemical resistant gloves and make sure to use it somewhere were spills or drips won't ruin furniture or floors. It will get off the barnacles and crusts on the outside, but it will also pit the shells themselves and turn them white. They'll need to be polished up afterwards.

Commercial polishing is done by hand using sanding and polishing wheels. (Not something we can get, or would probably want to do.) I thought about rock tumblers as well, but I worry about them cracking the shells. Also, you don't want the inside of the shells to be polished. (Unless you have Es - a worn shell like that may tempt them.)

I will try a kiddy tumbler first. I plan to stuff the shells with moist paper towel to keep the inside somewhat protected. It will be trial and error
The acid we got is called Magic Acid or similar. It wont harm your skin as long as it is not broken, but still do the job.
I will post an update once I know how it worked out!

wodesorel.. anything you don't know good info to know about that stuff...

BUMP

Those look awesome!