Adhesive for wood

The GOC (Zutphen, Holland), together with the State History museum
of Armenia are in the process of conserving a prehistoric wagon
from Armenia dating around 1300 BC. The wagon consists of many small
pieces that were put together some forty years ago in a 'less then
ideal' manner. We have removed all older restorations including
nails, metal wire, and saw dust mixed with PVAc. Now everything is
taken apart the amount of fragments is considerable. We do not want
to put  them back together again with nails etc. but we would rather
glue them with a reversible glue. Tests showed that the better
preserved pieces of wood are easily glued back together with several
reversible glues like Plextol B 500 or ordinary animal glue.

The majority of the parts nevertheless are soft, decomposed and
soaked with glycerol which makes them difficult to glue back. Are
there any glues which you would recommend to me? In the literature I
have read about artificial sugars to consolidate wood. Would this be
a good material to glue with?

Since I am working under considerable time pressure I hope  you will
send me your message soon if you know something.

Hans Piena


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 15:24
                Distributed: Tuesday, September 18, 2001
                       Message Id: cdl-15-24-011
                                  ***