[Nhcoll-l] Dissolving Gum Arabic

[Fabian Neisskenwirth]

Dear Paul,

gum arabic is water soluble, I would not use any strong solvents as 
acetone at all. Its completely unnecessary. I would rather use water 
compresses made with unbleached cotton and leave them for a longer while 
(even days), depending on the support they are glued on (and if you want 
to save it from possible damage through moisture). You can also use warm 
water to accelerate the process. But I would just leave it for a few 
hours to completely dissolve all the residues.

All the best!

Am 22.08.24 um 19:10 schrieb Callomon,Paul:
>
> Folks,
>
> Many of our older mollusk shells were originally glued to boards with 
> Gum Arabic. In the past, we’ve removed this waxy substance with warm 
> water and mechanical action, but I’ve been looking for a less physical 
> method. I’ve now found that steeping the shells in acetone for a few 
> hours dissolves the gum nicely, with no movement needed. Does anyone 
> else have experience with this? We know from past work that acetone 
> does not affect shells beyond driving out any residual water in or on 
> them.
>
> *Paul Callomon*
> /Collection Manager, Malacology and General Invertebrates/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia*
> /callomon at ansp.org <mailto:callomon at ansp.org> Tel 215-405-5096 - Fax 
> 215-299-1170/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nhcoll-l mailing list
> Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
> https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
> Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
> mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
> natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
> society. Seehttp://www.spnhc.org  for membership information.
> Advertising on NH-COLL-L is inappropriate.
-- 
*Fabian Neisskenwirth*
Restaurator/Präparator

Oststr. 138
DE-47057 Duisburg

Tel: +49 (0) 1573 2778729

www.naturhistorische-konservierung.de
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20240822/277ecc46/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Logo.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 47337 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20240822/277ecc46/attachment.jpg>