From: Patent Tactics, George Brock-Nannestad
Hi Tom and Steve and lurkers
re: Crazy Glue
Crazy Glue (cyanoacrylate) - a commercial product for the home user and similar products used to be an extremely good solution for 78s. The reason was two-fold: when it was the liquid, not the gel, it had an extremely small viscosity and very good wetting properties, which meant that it would be sucked into the narrowest crevices/capillaries. The curing only occurred when oxygen was absent, so closing a crack would cure the polymer. I have a nasty- smelling liquid which will make even completely open patches of polymer cure into a clear acrylic, and it was used for professional construction work, and I have never needed it for records.
What remained on the surface could be wiped away with a paper towel - capillary action. If you did that quickly there was no corrosion. If you left it, it would become a sort of film that was easily removeable under a microscope (essential for all this kind of work). When a crack was too wide - this could easily happen if the record was warped as well as cracked, and if the flattening prior to the cementing was not entirely perfect, the polymer would not cure - too much oxygen. This is where childrens playdough came into its finest professional use: a blob on each side of the record, bridging the gap and excluding oxygen, would make the polymer cure.
However, they have changed the formula for Crazy Glue and similar home products: it now cures due to exposure to humidity - a completely different and quite useless feature for my purpose. Possibly the shelf life of the product is better. I stopped teaching the restoration methods at the School of Conservation in Copenhagen in 1998 and have not had much need since, so I have not checked the market for professional cements, but I do believe that Loctite (R) has products that still work according to the "old" principle.
Kind regards,
George
P.S. My course in restoration also taught how to forge and sharpen tools suitable for 36x magnification and fine-motor skills.
Hi Steve:
Yes, all of what you say is absolutely true! And moreso with LPs because of smaller grooves (although disco singles have the widest/deepest grooves of any LP since the advent of 0.7 mil stylii). Like I said, we were shocked (shocked!) that it worked.
By the way, I'd be reluctant to use real-deal Crazy Glue on shellac. No chemistry facts to back me up, but since shellac seems more fragile and "softer," I'd worry that Crazy Glue would eat away the edge on which it was applied and thus assure the "pie slice" wouldn't fit correctly. Might be a phantom menace ...
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message ----- From: "Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2007 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] De-clicking (serious)
> ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Tom Fine" <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> In another case, I was doing a job transferring a large collection of
12"
> dance-mix singles for a DJ
>> (he was going all-digital, actually using his iPods as the players). A
couple
> of the records were
>> cracked or chipped on the edges. In one case, we found the pie-shaped
slice
> that broke out of the
>> edge. I still can't believe this worked, but we were able to very
carefully
> glue it back into place
>> with Crazy-Glue, using a sewing needle to apply the glue in the
needle-thin
> part of the vinyl under
>> the grooves. I really couldn't believe it when it played very well with
just
> one big tick at the
>> "tip" of the pie-slice. I do not expect to get that lucky ever again.
The
> client was a really nice
>> guy or I would have charged extra for the awful music content of the job!
;).
>>
> I have tried a number of times to similarly repair broken 78's which had
"bites"
> (and I had the "bitten" piece as well...!). My experience was that these
could
> be
> Crazy-Glued"...but, there was always a problem if the arc of the "bite"
was
> tangent (or whatever you call the meeting of two opposite-direction
arcs...?!)
> to the almost-circle of the playing-groove spiral at some point. Remember
that
> the playing groove is about 3 mil (.003") wide...so if you add a layer of
glue
> around .001" or more, the needle/stylus can easily slip into the wrong
groove
> at the repaired spot...!
>
> Steven C. Barr
>