Supplier for AYAA sought

Sharra Grow <slg283 [at] gmail__com> writes

>I am posting on behalf of Greg Papatrefon, a System Engineer for the
>US Army. He has been searching for a supplier of AYAA (a polyvinyl
>acetate resin found in many products used in art conservation). and
>came across an archived Cons DistList post regarding Union Carbide,
>which apparently stopped making AYAA around 2008. Does anyone have
>information on replacements or other suppliers?

As I reported on the DistList in 2008, and in AIC News in 2009
(March pp. 16-17) the Union Carbide AYA_ series resins are no longer
being manufactured and I have been unable to locate any supplier
that still has a stockpile of these resins.  I am currently working
on a research project with Jane Down and others at CCI to identify
potential substitutes for the AYA_ series, as well as for Mowilith
20 which is also no longer manufactured and to my knowledge no
longer available from any suppliers (Mowilith 30. 40 and 50 are
currently manufactured by Synthomer as M30, M40, M50 and M50 but
they stopped production the lower molecular weight M20 by 2006). The
research is ongoing and we hope to publish the results within the
next year.

And as a reminder: as I reported in AIC News in 2009 "Readers should
note that although some suppliers are currently selling resins
labeled as AYAA, AYAC, AYAF, and AYAT, these products are not made
by Union Carbide, unless the supplier has reserve stock of the
discontinued resins. When Union Carbide stopped supplying the
resins, at least one company, Talas, located a new manufacturer and
requested grades of polyvinyl acetates that were equivalent to the
Union Carbide AYA_ series. Representatives from Talas report that
they purchased these new products after being assured they were
"comparable" by technicians at the new manufacturer, who were
familiar with the Union Carbide products.  However, the technical
data posted on the Talas website (molecular weight, Tg, etc.) for
the new resins does not correspond to previously published data for
the Union Carbide products."

Samantha Alderson
Conservator
Anthropology Division
American Museum of Natural History
79th St and Central Park West
New York, NY  10024
212-769-5446


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 27:13
                Distributed: Monday, September 16, 2013
                       Message Id: cdl-27-13-001
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