We have old glass specimen jars with glass lids in pathology laboratory for demonstration of various gross pathological lesions. Many of them need to be opened, cleaned for replacing old organ specimen with new ones. But we are unable to open them easily without breaking them. If any body has tips/tricks for opening these, please help!
It might be trivial....but without knowing which material has been used to seal the glass lid (guessing you are talking either of "glass stoppers" in a wide sense or perhaps something like circular or squared (window) glass 'plates', 'lapped' knobbed lid, or 'cover flap'-forms, e.g. like inverted petri dishes -mounted with a kind of 'dry adhesive' ) into / onto the glass bottle neck or, upper edge of a bevel(l)ed glass jar.
If you know the 'sealant' used (and its solvent evaporated long ago ) you might try to use rinsing or drizzling somehow and more often / repeatedly with that or any other potent solvent. Such an operation, i.e.. "softening", could be supported by previous scractching away hard(ened) mountant protruding anywhere...one could use old scalpel- or even small & thin (Feather-) one way microtome-blades for that task....
Also one could try to use the thermal coefficient difference between 'warm(ed)' and 'cold' glass by warming anyhow the 'neck region' (but this can be unpromising or even hopeless depending on the shape of the jars.
One possible site where you can follow some hint (removing stuck glass: with hot water, warm oil, also perhaps acidic acid ): @ https://www.wikihow.com/Remove-a-Stuck-Glass-Decanter-Stopper .
Period here, ....my best wishes and good luck....
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