Durham Putty

Len Hambleton <hamblesl [at] gmail__com> writes

>Would anyone share their method or experience in possibly dissolving
>Durham Putty? Someone in their brilliance or lack of, has used it in
>the consolidation of a tall clock case. The splintered area around
>the hood's hinges of the round door was "repaired " using this
>material. Physical excavation is unthinkable!

If you were referring to Durham's Water Putty, it is a gypsum-based
fill or casting material with added iron oxide, talc, and quartz
(talc being 2-5% of its composition).  This being the case, it's
basically plaster with a few additives, so you may want to
direct/broaden your search to ways to get plaster out of wood.

I suspect that if you used an aqueous gel that was acidic enough to
dissolve the plaster without being too terribly acidic on the wood,
you could soften it sufficiently to get it off.  It would need to be
in the range of a pH of 3-5 for dissolving the plaster. Depending on
what wood you've got, the pH may vary--but if you stay within 1pH
unit (above/below) the pH of your wood, you could probably do it. It
seems it would be best to apply very judiciously and try to avoid
the wood and/or get on and get off in the shortest amount of time
possible.

Company material info:

    <URL:http://www.waterputty.com/pages/view.htm>

MSDS:

    <URL:http://research.dfci.harvard.edu/
        ehs/MSDS/shops/durmham%20water%20putty.pdf>

    <URL:http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/
        cgi-bin/household/brands?tbl=brands&id=4012001>

    **** Moderator's comments: The above URLs have been wrapped for
    email. There should be no newlines.

Kate Payne de Chavez


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 22:23
                Distributed: Saturday, October 18, 2008
                       Message Id: cdl-22-23-004
                                  ***