[Nhcoll-l] Keeping bills shut

[Shoobs, Nate]

Nina,
I don’t work with vertebrates, so others may have differing opinions about wherher or not one *should​* use adhesives for this task, but I am a big fan of Paraloid b-72 as a general purpose museum adhesive. You can vary the tensile strength of it by the concentration, and it is easily reversible using acetone/ethanol. We use it to repair broken mollusk shells in our collection.

You may want to swing by your institutuon’s paleo prep lab, I’m sure they have some you could experiment with!
-Nate


-
Nathaniel F. Shoobs, Curator of Mollusks
College of Arts & Sciences Dept. of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, The Ohio State University
Museum of Biological Diversity
1315 Kinnear Rd, Columbus, OH 43212
614-688-1342 (Office)
mbd.osu.edu<http://mbd.osu.edu/>
________________________________
From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> on behalf of Black, Nina <npblack at fas.harvard.edu>
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2025 9:57:04 AM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Keeping bills shut

Hi All, Does anyone have advice for an archival glue that can be used to keep bills closed when preparing bird skins, or perhaps can suggest a good method for this? We always tie them shut with string through the nostrils, but for some birds

Hi All,

Does anyone have advice for an archival glue that can be used to keep bills closed when preparing bird skins, or perhaps can suggest a good method for this? We always tie them shut with string through the nostrils, but for some birds that have long bills or oddly shaped ones it is hard to keep it closed. Some colleagues have used regular super glue, but I am not so keen on this idea

Thanks,
Nina

Nina Black
Curatorial Assistant
Ornithology & Mammalogy
Museum of Comparative Zoology
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