Bone fills

I am working with some very large archaeological bones (elephants,
hippotami etc.) and part of the collection here features fills for
bone, made out of a combination of wax with pine resin and gypsum.
Does anyone know about other instances of fills made out of a
mixture of these specific materials, and the way they aged with
time? It will also help to know if there are people using this kind
of combination at present, as I know of at least one person who is
making his own combination and using that as a fill for large bones,
holding the opinion that the way wax tends to attracts particulate
matter can be counteracted by a certain proportion of pine resin,
and the whole made into a putty that hardens into a very strong
material with the use of gypsum.

I am asking these questions also because there are problems with
using materials such as B72 with glass microballoons for very large
bones: this may not be strong enough and is also very expensive, a
problem in a very large, but not very budgeted, collection. If
anyone would like to inform about tested materials in bone fills,
this would be very helpful.

Gali Beiner
Conservator
Palaeontology lab
Hebrew University
Jerusalem, Israel


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 17:15
                   Distributed: Monday, July 28, 2003
                       Message Id: cdl-17-15-005
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