Maniraptoran Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 is there any downside to using elmers glue to put fossils back together? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Pristis Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 White glue will lose its adhesive quality in acetone. Make sure that the pieces of fossil are consolidated before you put them together with white glue. http://pristis.wix.com/the-demijohn-page What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time? ---Shakespeare, The Tempest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Missourian Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Mine seem to have held up after 20 years. Context is critical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrangellian Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Depends on the fossil/matrix I guess.. I don't know the differences between Elmers and Weldbond, but I understand Weldbond to be essentially inert which is important with fossils in long term storage, and I've been using it for a few years so far with no problems. I imagine it will last as long as Elmers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grampa dino Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Weldbond is the white glue we use out here,on complaints after more years then I can think about Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrangellian Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 (edited) Good to have confirmation from others, thanks GD. I guess the only drawback is if you want to undo it.. tho I never thought to try acetone as Harry says. Edited December 1, 2011 by Wrangellian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashcraft Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 I think what Harry was saying, is that when stabilizing the material, you usually use something like butvar dissolved in acetone. If the acetone is not dry, the glue will not hold, if you try to glue broken parts back together. I don't think that acetone has much affect on white glue once it is set. ashcraft, brent allen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobWill Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 This thread and others discussing glues, stablizers and sealers makes me think it might be useful to consolidate all of the info we have about these tools into a single reference for easy access by those who've never needed to use them to visit when the occasion does arise. I understand not everyone may agree on every detail and maybe the forum is not an ideal place for reference resources but if someone with lots of experience on this could start a new topic which could be pinned and added to as new products become available or new applications are found it might save having to revisit old questions by someone who's unable to get answers with a search. This topic might even justify a whole new section in the same ways photography and documents have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maniraptoran Posted December 1, 2011 Author Share Posted December 1, 2011 White glue will lose its adhesive quality in acetone. Make sure that the pieces of fossil are consolidated before you put them together with white glue. what do you mean by consolidated? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobWill Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 what do you mean by consolidated? Crumbly fossils are sometimes stablized by products like butvar like ashcraft mentioned. If your fossil is pretty solid this is not necessary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrangellian Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 (edited) I think what Harry was saying, is that when stabilizing the material, you usually use something like butvar dissolved in acetone. If the acetone is not dry, the glue will not hold, if you try to glue broken parts back together. I don't think that acetone has much affect on white glue once it is set. OK well maybe he should have said more, it sounded like he said White glue will lose its adhesive quality in acetone. I never thought of diluting white glue in acetone before application, so I didn't think Maniraptoran would have either.. ? Edited December 1, 2011 by Wrangellian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobWill Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 (edited) No, I think Ashcraft was just making sure no one thought you could use acetone to "undo it" as you correctly said and that Harry's intent was to be sure any acetone used to dilute buvtar was dry before applying elmers, not using acetone to dilute elmers. But that still leaves your point unanswered. Maniraptoran was asking about drawbacks and you mentioned the inability to undo it if needed. Does anyone know a way to disolve dried elmers? Edited December 1, 2011 by BobWill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kehbe Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 (edited) No, I think Ashcraft was just making sure no one thought you could use acetone to "undo it" as you correctly said and that Harry's intent was to be sure any acetone used to dilute buvtar was dry before applying elmers, not using acetone to dilute elmers. But that still leaves your point unanswered. Maniraptoran was asking about drawbacks and you mentioned the inability to undo it if needed. Does anyone know a way to disolve dried elmers? I have had success by putting copious amounts of elmers glue between a piece of macaroni and a paper plate, (macaroni colored with food coloring works best) storing in a shoebox in an attic that fluctuates between 'to hot to breath' and 'to cold to mess with' and in say, oh, 40 years or so, there will only be three of three thousand pieces of macaroni remaining on the plate and in the meantime, oh wait, its the other way around, the elmers glue is always left in big hunks on the plate, it's the macaroni that has gone missing! :Bananasaur: (edit) PS... This post doesn't have to be included in the consolidated glue information thread Edited December 1, 2011 by Kehbe It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. Charles Darwin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 the point again with proprietary formulations is that you don't know what all is in them. but from a practical standpoint, you should be very sure what you want to do before you do it when applying consolidant to a porous material, because once it's in there, you're not really going to be able to get it all out again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Pristis Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 There are a number of exhaustive discussions of consolidants and white glue in the archives. Here is a link to a good example: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php/topic/3629-preserving-fossils/page__hl__consolidant White glue, even hard-set white glue, will lose its adhesive quality when a glued fossil (say a tooth or bone) is soaked in an acetone solution. The join will just fall apart under the fossil's own weight. If that seems counterintuitive, it's simple enough to test this assertion. Tell us your results. (My experience is that a "carpenters' glue" formulation is much more resistant to acetone than is a white glue formulation.) Based on my experience with white-glued fossils dipped in an acetone/Butvar solution, intuition tells me that a white glue/acetone solution would be useless. But, that's another experiment. http://pristis.wix.com/the-demijohn-page What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time? ---Shakespeare, The Tempest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobWill Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 Great link with lots of info. I'll save it for reference. Maybe we should have sent Maniraptorin there to start with Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracer Posted December 2, 2011 Share Posted December 2, 2011 a white glue/acetone solution is kind of a non sequitur in that there's no reason to combine two solvents with pva. even though water and acetone are miscible i think, either you go with the aqueous emulsion, or you dissolve pva beads in acetone, but you wouldn't ever mix the two. reading that last linked topic from like 3 years ago was scary, because i sounded nuttier then than i do now, which is the opposite of what i thought had been happening, but at any rate, back then i trended toward using pva more and now i trend toward using pvb more. i still don't like pvb's tendency to put a white "frost" on fossils when it dries, but there was a blurb before about putting the fossil in a bag while it's drying, and i also sometimes just wait until the solvent has all off-gassed and wipe any whitish area with acetone and that clears it up. i also wipe it with acetone if any area dries "shiny" because i'm not a shiny type of guy. the pva was more forgiving of that sort of thing, but it has a tendency to remain a bit softer after drying. it has a lower "glass transition temperature", which means it tends to soften and flow at a lower temperature than pvb does. most of the time i prefer the natural look and feel of the fossils before i consolidate them so i prefer a consolidant that alters those characteristics as little as possible. that's why i like being able to wipe off the exterior with solvent after the dunking. i'm rambling again, aren't i? i can feel it. i'm rambling. anyway, since i'm rambling, somebody said something in another topic i think about "watered-down superglue". there is a very thin, very "watery" formula of CA glue, but there's no water involved. super glue is set by moisture, so i breathe on glued areas sometimes to set them quicker. but one of the semi-cool characteristics of set superglue is that it's kind of brittle cuz it's like an acrylic, so you can blast it cleanly off the surface of a fossil with air abrasion. i kinda like CA glue quite a bit for certain things, but there's more of a learning curve to working with it than with a lot of other stuff. if it wouldn't completely embarrass me i'll tell about the time i bought the giant "economy-size" bottle of that stuff to try to save money on a big project. don't ever try to deal with a giant bottle of CA glue. the stuff climbs out of the bottle and attacks you somehow. and it flat burns you too in addition to gluing you to stuff or to yourself. geez i wonder if i had a point when i started... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrangellian Posted December 4, 2011 Share Posted December 4, 2011 Maybe you ramble, tracer, but you're not the only one (ahem), and you do bring up some points: I know what you mean about the learning curve with CA glue, I tried it and had all the problems you mention and more, so I switched back to my tried-and-true diluted-Weldbond-injected-via-syringe method. I too don't like the glossy finish, so I'm always careful to dab off the excess with toilet paper. I haven't tried reversing any Weldbond with acetone but seems to me there was some sort of white glue in my past that was reversed with acetone, and even the Weldbond I have noticed turns white again when wetted with H2O, even long after it has dried, so I wonder if just soaking it in water for hours or days will soften it enough - that is if the fossil isn't affected in the process. I recall doing this with Elmers actually. I havent tried prepping anything that has been stabilized with Weldbond/white glue, so I can't say what difficulty it presents, but you might be right that CA which dries more brittle is better for that purpose. I just hate using the stuff, it dries too quick and crawls everywhere you don't want it to go and you dont notice until it's too late! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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