Volume 20, Number 4-5
Sep 1996

Supplies

Note: Suppliers should send their news and samples to the column editor, Elizabeth Morse. She is Assistant Conservator, Harvard University Library, Conservation Laboratory, Holyoke Center Room 847, Cambridge, MA 02138 (617/495-8596, fax 617/496-8344). Since she has been away recently, this column has been compiled from the literature.

Description or mention of products or services in this column should not be taken as an endorsement.

• In the July Picture Framing Magazine, Hugh Phibbs describes a way of making two-pound weights that are cheap, dense, compact and easily handled, by gluing together a mass of tiny lead shot inside a form of two-ply board. The shape he recommends is trapezoidal in cross section, with the broader surface on top, to make it easier to pick up. The glue can be a thermoplastic one or a synthetic emulsion.
• An English supplier for isinglass is James Vickers, Dallow Works, Dallow Street, Burton Upon Trent, Staffordshire DE14 2PQ, UK. Contact person is Michael Grace (ph: +44 1283 563 268, fax +44 1283 511 472). Isinglass is used mainly in painting conservation for consolidation of flaking and blistering paint, according to Sally Outhwaite's note in the AICCM National Newsletter for March 1996. She mentions an article in the JAIC for spring 1993, on pages 23-31, which gives a good background for the use of isinglass. It costs £63 per pound.
• Museum Services Corporation has four pieces of equipment for book conservation:
  A book and document leafcaster with digitizer for calculating the area to be filled,
  A fold and edge caster, for leafcasting only part of a page
  A polyester sealer, and
  book suction machine, which makes it unnecessary to disbind a book in order to mend or use solvents on part of a single page.
  For paper conservation, they have cold suction tables, the Weidner moisture chamber, a table mount suction device, a nearly flat manuscript suction device (a.k.a. the Stealth Sucker), a steam cleaner and a steamer, a light table and Nilfisk GS80 vacuum cleaners. They also have supplies and a number of more generally useful tools and kinds of equipment. Contact them at 1107 East Cliff Rd., Burnsville, MN 55337-1514 (612/895-5199 or 800/672-1107; fax 612/895-5298; e-mail artequip@minn.net).
• People often ask how safe glue sticks are. Since there are many brands, and the formulations are likely to change without notice, it is hard to generalize. Individual brands have been tested to answer specific questions, but there has been no research that applies to all glue sticks. However, there was a short discussion of them on the Conservation DistList earlier this month, in which people shared their experience and observations.
• In summary, glue sticks were said to be safer because they were less acidic, though some might be questionable in terms of reversibility. Also, all of them were said to harden up to the consistency of candy or shellac; wheat or rice starch paste was recommended instead. Another person recommended using a plastic syringe filled with "the adhesive of your choice." They are as convenient as a glue stick and will keep the adhesive from drying out for as long as a year; a source is The Woodworkers' Store, 21801 Industrial Boulevard, Rogers, MN 55374-9514 (800/279-4441).
• Jane Down's message said that CCI had analyzed three types of glue sticks in 1982 and found that they were all composed of poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) and had a pH of 9. The pH might be a problem with alkaline sensitive items. Labels glued 10 years ago peel extremely easily today, and photographs glued at the same time lost their gloss in areas where the adhesive was on the reverse.
• A query on the DistList about sources of Japanese paper early in June brought a torrent of replies, identifying Paper NAO, Hiromi, BookMakers and Aiko's, two of which, by the way, are in the Guild of Book Workers' 1992 Supply Directory. In addition, the Directory names Bookbinder's Warehouse, Falkiner Fine Papers Limited, Johnson Bookbinding Supply Co., The Preservation Emporium and Sanpho Corporation.