Consolidating bone

Sayde Sortibran Cardenas <sortibran [at] yahoo__com> writes

>My name is Sayde Sortibran, and I studied restauration in Mexico
>City. I need information about how I can consolidate  bone, it is a
>mamut bone.

For consolidating bone I use polyvinylbutyral (Pioloform BL 18 by
Wacker Polymer Systems or Mowital B30 H15 by Hoechst/Aventis)
dissolved in ethanol. The clean specimen should be submerged in the
solution until it is totally soaked. Maybe this process should be
repeated several times with increasing concentration. If it is not
possible to submerge the bone the dissolved Polyvinylbutyral can be
applied with a brush but the penetration will be less good. After
drying (use a fume hood) the specimen should be stable. The benefits
of Polyvinylbutyral are:

    *   for dissolving you need only ethanol not acetone or toluol

    *   the consolidation processes is reversible by washing the
        specimen in ethanol

    *   Polyvinylbutyral is widely used in the chemical industry
        (for printing-inks, paper-coatings, etc.). Therefore it is
        available and relatively cheap. Another method which
        provides good results is the use of Paraloid B 72 (by Rohm)
        dissolved in acetone or toluol.

Dipl.-Geol. Michael Maus
Johannes Gutenberg University
Institute for Geosciences / Department of Paleontology
Becherweg 21
55099 Mainz
Germany


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 17:8
                   Distributed: Tuesday, July 1, 2003
                        Message Id: cdl-17-8-005
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