Consolidating fossil redwood

In the near future I have to work with wood from the German
tertiary, especially with redwood from browncoal pits. This redwood
reacts in many aspects like recent wood, but it is sometimes brittle.
For making sections in a size that can be presented in an exhibition
the fossil redwood is not stable enough. The wood must be treated
before sectioning.

I found out that there is a technique for penetrating recent wood
with monomere acrylic resin. As far as I know this is used
commercially for knife handles etc.

Does anybody know something about this technique and the resin used
for this or are there other possibilities to consolidate the
redwood.

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 17:34
                Distributed: Thursday, October 16, 2003
                       Message Id: cdl-17-34-022
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