seeds few questions about seed saving, and the worst mistake ive ever made

[thismembername]

Ok, first i made the biggest mistake ever. I was out of latex gloves and decided to deseed these few pods without them, I only had two Ghost's, and a bunch of Maules Red Hot... no biggie right. Ha.
 
Fingers are on fire, did oil, alcohol, baking soda, milk, sour cream, dish detergent, etc etc. It's horrific. Hopefully in 6 hours I will be ok.
 
 
Anywho, I soaked the seeds for a few mins in water, and a drop or two of hydro peroxid but I couldn't remember if their is any signifigance between floating and sinking seeds (air tight). To my knowledge the sinking seeds are not air tight and will not save correct. Other than that they are just sitting on fresh papper towls and air drying for two days and will be put into paper envelopes.
 
Also, I cant tell if these came true, can anyone ID the chocolate peppers in the pics, they are supposed to be chocolate 7pots. Look right to yall?
 

 

 

[Nigel]

Yeah, I think we`ve all done that once. It`s far worse if you try to use hot water to rinse your hands. That allows the oil to soak into the skin more and then you are screwed.
 
I don`t pay any attention to which ones float or sink any more and I`ve had germination from both. The H2O2 rinse is a good idea, but I tend not to do it to fresh seeds, but soak them in peroxide before I try to germinate them later on. I doubt it makes a difference, but I`d rather treat dry seeds with hydrogen peroxide than fresh seeds that might allow the peroxide into the seed. 
 
Chocolate 7-pot is normally associated with 7-pot douglah, at least in my experience. The other type is Brown 7-pot, but you can see why there is a lot of confusion. Yours look to me like they are 7-pot douglah. I`ve seen hundreds of those first hand, but only one Brown 7-pot, which was much, much larger. I compared the 2 different pods recently,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh3lDQobQHk

 

[hottoddy]

Why soak seeds before saving? I just dry them out on paper towels and have had no issues. The little bits of stuck pepper just dry and crumble. I do soak before planting.

 

[thismembername]

I was under the assumption that they should be rinsed, preferably with h202 to ward off any potential seed born illness .

 

[thegreenman]

Here is the Brown 7 pot I grew from Pepperlover. 
 

 

[thismembername]

thanks for the visual thegreenman, looks like mine.
 
 
does anyone else rinse their seeds before drying?

 

[Dave2000]

There is no need, if there was any fungus/etc on the seeds themselves then it was there the whole time the pod developed which either means the seeds were already destroyed, or they are tolerant.
 
If on the other hand you forgot about some peppers and left them on a shelf where they overly ripened, then started to rot and mold, that would be a situation to rinse them off if you really must try to save those particular seeds.  On the other hand, remember that in nature the pod falls off the plant, lies on the ground to rot and mold if nothing eats it, and this provides a medium the seed sprouts from next spring.  Getting most of the pepper guts off is more about making it easier and take less space to dry, and man's obsession with neatness.
 
As for them sinking or floating, that is a test after they are fully dried out, just before you attempt to sew them to germinate.  Floating seeds are bad as they have air inside where some other anatomical portion of the seed should have developed to fill the area.  However, small bubbles clinging to the seed, or foreign matter on the outside of the seed causing an increase in water surface tension, can cause a good seed that would otherwise sink, to float when there is nothing wrong with it.
 
I go more by visual inspection after fully dried.  If they look too small or too dark then the odds are they aren't viable.  If I overlook a bad seed it doesn't matter too much because when I sew them I put a few in each pot and cull those which are outperformed by the dominant sprout in the pot.

There are a couple more effective ways to get pepper oil off hands.  The way I'd normally do it is Lestoil, as it is very effective at cutting through greasy oily substances without damaging your skin.
 
Industrial strength way if pain is really bad is trisodium phosphate.  It will not just pull up the pepper oil but also remove all the natural oils out of your skin leaving it looking a bit leathery, but you can soak them in water for a moment afterwards and put some lotion on them.
 
Of course you could always take an Advil.  The pain won't go away but it won't hurt as much.  If all you have around is dish detergent it can help but first rub it full strength into dry skin, wait a moment for it to soak in more, then rinse with cold water. Dry hands and repeat.

 

[Dulac]

I've done worse. I ran out of latex gloves and deseeded my entire crop, which included TS Butch ts. My skin is not too sensitive to capsaicin but that felt worse than a chemical burn I had. I think witch hazel provided me the best relief from capsaicin irritation. I thought that would never stop burning. It did that for about two days.